uranium-nitride32 Posted June 2, 2016 Posted June 2, 2016 Hello, I am a big fan of a lot of Noam Chomsky's work in both linguistics and political criticisms. I am not a 100% anarcho-capitalist, but I still hope I am welcome here. I tend to really like Noam Chomsky's political ideas, both on domestic and foreign policies. It seems that the ancaps, and libertarians really like his foreign policy and ignore his views on domestic issues. For example, when Stefan interviewed him, he introduced him as an anarchist, but did not specify that he is an anarcho-syndicalist, which I know anarcho-capitalists would really really disagree with that view. I guess my question is, why is there so much love for him by three different groups that he disagrees with? Many groups like to claim him as being on their side.
Mister Mister Posted June 3, 2016 Posted June 3, 2016 Hi there and welcome. Sorry to be dense, but what is so strange about appreciating a thinker's views on certain issues, but not others? I like a lot of Ann Coulter's stuff on race, gender, welfare, and other social issues, but her bloodthirsty support of war is quite shocking and horrifying to me. Tom Woods is a great libertarian thinker, but also a devout Catholic which is perplexing to someone like me. And Chomsky has very spot-on analysis of US foreign policy, but is pretty boring and status-quo on just about everything else, displaying the same bold ignorance of economics, and straw-manning free market arguments as everyone else in academia. What do you mean "ignore his views on domestic issues" ? There certainly has been a lot said by an-caps about left libertarian ideas such as syndicalism. The short argument is, that syndicalism is just a description of a certain approach to organizing an economic firm - it is neither moral nor immoral. I have seen no evidence to suggest that it is a practical way to organize a business, but people are free to do things as they choose. But most ancoms or syndicalists will not return the same tolerance to capitalists, which is the problem. My impression with left libertarians is, they feign to accept liberty in principle, but also have a kind of utilitarian vision of what a just world looks like ("Cosmic Justice", Thomas Sowell calls it), but the reality of liberty doesn't look the way they want it to, because of the wide distribution of intelligence, skill, work ethic, good/bad choices, and luck among the population, which is also not evenly distributed between the races and the genders. So as a result, some people in a free society do very well, and some people do not so well - this is unacceptable to the egalitarian fantasies of the left libertarian, and so they ascribe these things to "economic hierarchies" which are exactly like the state even though they appear to be voluntary. That's the most sense I've ever been able to make of it, what do you think? 1
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