Recently, I became aware of an article by Anthony Arnove which originally appeared in International Socialism, a quarterly journal of socialist theory. The article heaps both great praise and great criticism on Chomsky, but it is the criticisms on which I will focus in this rebuttal. I must say, I find it odd that at times throughout the article Arnove seems to attack Chomsky's scholarship in the area of socialist topics such as Marx, Lenin, and the Bolsheviks, given that Arnove later edited The Essential Chomsky, a collection of important writings by Chomsky.
While there is much in Arnove's article which surely deserves discussion, I have selected some of the assertions offered which to me seem either unfair, misleading, or completely unsupported within the article itself. I have condensed these assertions down to a list of quotes from the article, along with Arnove's numbered footnotes inline, where they are used to support his claims. The footnotes, and any other related assertions are tab-indented under the main assertion, and my rebuttals are also tab-indented, preceded by an asterisk.
- "Chomsky saw Stalinism as a natural outgrowth of the theory and practice of Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolshevik Party - the view that Chomsky still holds today"
12 The Stalinists' role in Spain runs completely counter to Lenin and
Trotsky's ideas of internationalism and socialism from below. See, for
example, Trotsky's 19 February 1937 statement on the Spanish Civil War: 'In
Spain the Stalinists, who lead the chorus from on high, have advanced the
formula to which Caballero, president of the cabinet, also adheres: First
military victory, and then social reform. I consider this formula fatal for the
Spanish Revolution... Audacious social reforms represent the strongest
weapon in the civil war and the fundamental condition for the victory over
fascism. The policies of Stalin...are dictated by a fear of frightening the
French bourgeoisie' (L Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution (1931-39) N Allen
and G Breitman (eds) (New York, 1973), pp242-243.
* Because Trotsky may have denounced the Stalinists does not prove that
Leninist ideas did not influence them or help them come to power.
-"Though immensely thought provoking, Chomsky's densely textured political writings suffer from two weaknesses: the lack of a clear theoretical framework and a lack of concreteness about strategies for resistance."
- "As Milan Rai remarks in a recent, highly sympathetic study of Chomsky's political
ideas, 'It can sometimes seem as if Chomsky is doing little more than knitting together
a mass of fascinating but unrelated insights and facts about US policy' and that partly
as a result 'readers of Chomsky's political writings can be forgiven for feeling that
the dominant message of his work is not that "there is a great deal that can be done"'
27 M Rai, Chomsky's Politics, op cit, pp21 and 49.
* As somebody who has been exposed to plenty of Chomsky, I can attest
to the fact that I have not been left with this impression. In fact,
Chomsky has been one of the driving forces behind my motivation
to act. The problem is that you can't act effectively against such a powerful
force as U.S. state planners without first having an intimate understanding
of the nature of that force, and perhaps this is why Chomsky's work
has focused more on providing information than specific strategies
for resistance. Chomsky doesn't have to be all things to all activists in
order to rightfully escape the kind of criticism offered here.
-"[O]ne of [anarchism's] features is a hesitancy to argue for specific priorities for political activism."
* No supporting evidence for this claim, except for Chomsky's own words,
which were not even said in the context of anarchism:
"I try to keep it in the back of my mind and think about it, but I'm
afraid that the answer is always the same...[I]f you join with other
people, you can make changes. Millions of things are possible, depending on
where you want to put your efforts"
28 N Chomsky, Secrets, Lies and Democracy (Tuscan, 1994), pp105-106.
- "[Chomsky is] mistaken about how early the Soviet Union became a block to the socialist movement..."
* No supporting evidence given for this claim, and there is no further
discussion of this in the article.
- "[T]he thrust of Chomsky's argument [that the 'doctrinal system' has 'removed far beyond thought' even 'the minimal conditions for functioning democracy'] is to suggest that people are so isolated and the propaganda system so overwhelming, that opportunities for raising revolutionary politics are for the most part non-existent. Or, if they do exist, such strategies have no clear priority over other forms of political activism."
* No supporting evidence given for the claim that is is the "thrust" of
Chomsky's argument, or that it follows logically from Chomsky's words
that "opportunities for raising revolutionary politics are for the most
part non-existent". Rather, examples of Chomsky's take on the severity
of the problem are offered as if they suggest he implies this.
-"[Chomsky] retreated from the logical conclusions of his own arguments [that US military interests were 'the real motivation of the actions' in Bosnia and Haiti] because of a lack of confidence in a political alternative."
- "[O]n the eve of the invasion, Chomsky told the Boston Globe that,
'given the givens', he would invade."
44 Boston Globe, 18 September 1994.
* This is misleading. What the quote leaves out is what followed
immediately after:
"It'll probably cut the terror. The question is, given the rotten
intention of US policy-makers, 'What is best for the people of Haiti?'
It's a no-win choice. Do you favor continued terror with more and
more people getting killed? Or Haitians having to continue to work
for five cents an hour? I prefer five cents an hour. But without
any pretensions about democracy."
So Chomsky in no way retreats from a logical conclusion here,
regardless of whether or not the author agrees with his logic.
Also, it should be noted that the word "invade" was not part of
Chomsky's quote.
- "Chomsky's position on the dispatch of troops by the United States and
NATO to the Balkans following the Dayton accords followed a similar logic
to his support for the Haiti intervention: it was the best of the poor
alternatives he saw available."
50 N Chomsky, Class Warfare, op cit, pp160-161.
* Nothing is mentioned or cited regarding Chomsky's criticism of the idea of
intervention in Bosnia, which is to say the author offers no examples of
contradiction on Chomsky's part. Chomsky only raised the hypothetical that
"[if he] had been in Congress...and had been asked to choose between exactly
two alternatives: One, let them keep massacring one another; Two, put in US
troops to separate warring armies" then he would have chosen option Two.
-"Chomsky has frequently suggested that [Marxism] has little beyond 'trivial' insights to offer...[despite] Marx's important commentaries on the relevance of the Paris Commune for defining a vision of a future socialist society...[and] the most basic premises of Marxism [which have been] tested in practice..."
57 C M Young, 'Anarchy in the USA', Rolling Stone 631 (28 May 1992), p47.
* The word "trivial" does not appear in the context of Marxism in the above
Rolling Stone article, but rather in the context of "the field of social and
historical and economic analysis" as a whole in Marx's day. Searches on
chomsky.info or google for the words "Marx" and "trivial" yielded nothing
within the first few pages of results to back up the author's claim.
* No examples cited by the author of Marx's premises tested in practice.
-"What characterises Chomsky's attacks on Leninism and Bolshevism, beyond their virulence, is a surprising lack of intellectual or scholarly engagement with the actual history or theory of the Bolshevik tradition"
- "Chomsky claims that 'the Bolshevik takeover was recognised as an
attack on socialism very quickly by a large part of the left...
[including] Rosa Luxemburg'"
68 N Chomsky, World Orders Old and New, op cit, p38.
* What about the others Chomsky mentions in this passage as
recognizing the takeover as an attack on socialism: Anton
Pannekoek, Bertrand Russell, and the libertarian left in
general? Chomsky is not alone in his analysis of the
Bolshevik takeover.
- "[This is] a completely inaccurate statement...[Luxemburg] was
clear that:
'The party of Lenin was...the only one in Russia which grasped the
true interest of the revolution in that first period. It was the
element which drove the revolution forward, and, thus, it was the
only party which really carried on a socialist policy...
[T]he Bolsheviks, though they were at the beginning of the revolution
a persecuted, slandered and hunted minority attacked on all sides,
arrived within the shortest time to the head of the revolution and
were able to bring under their banner all the genuine masses of the
people: the urban proletariat, the army, the peasants, as well as
the revolutionary elements of democracy.'"
69 R Luxemburg, Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (London, 1994), p372.
* But, of course, Luxemburg later went on to say in the same
manuscript that, "the remedy which Trotsky and Lenin have
found, the elimination of democracy as such, is worse than
the disease it is supposed to cure", so indeed Luxemburg
did "quickly" recognize that what was happening was an
attack on socialism, a central element of which is supposed
to be democracy.
-"In striking contrast to his highly documented work on almost every other subject, Chomsky provides little evidence of sources or documents to support his position, even though most serious historical work on the revolution makes it clear that it was not a coup by the Bolsheviks, but a revolution from below, entirely dependent on the Bolsheviks having become the majority within the soviets."
* No specific assertions of Chomsky's are referenced here as examples
of his offering little evidence to support his position.
-"One central element of Chomsky's critique is that the Bolsheviks were hostile towards and later destroyed the soviets because of their elitist attitude toward the working class. Beyond the many arguments directly contradicting this view in Lenin's State and Revolution [there are also] later work[s] which Chomsky argues [were] 'all a fraud'"
76 'Noam Chomsky: An Interview', Radical Philosophy, op cit, p39.
* Chomsky makes no claims about "later" works in the interview;
rather he describes a very specific period of time in the months
leading up to the 1917 revolution, specifically mentioning State
and Revolution as an example of the kind of libertarian rhetoric
designed to win broad support for the Bolsheviks, despite their
overall track record of authoritarian tendencies.
It seems obvious that one should be more concerned with the
actions of Leninists than with their writings. We have only to
look to Luxemburg, quoted above by both Arnove and myself,
to understand the elitist acts on the part of their party which
destroyed direct democratic control by the working class.
