[JohnRawls]

[youtube]K4Tq4VE8eHQ[/youtube]

I am fairly curiouse what will the hardcore socialists of pofo think about this. (Fascists, Nazbols and generally the centre-left are welcome to discuss also)

[Conscript]

I didn't watch the whole video but from what I know chomsky isn't much of a hero to the 'hardcore socialists' as you call them. He's a 'libertarian socialist', and more importantly, non-marxist. It shows through often in his analysis of the USSR, which is summed up as 'working people were slaves to the state' or 'it was state capitalist', and while I agree with it the latter, he uses it to simply dismiss the USSR and equate it to any bourgeois state like an opportunist, and that's the end of it. It's quite a plague on the left and he's an icon for it.

Like all anarchists, his views on marxism lack substance and his ideas for socialist revolution are nigh useless compared to Lenin, trotsky, or stalin. He seems entirely ignorant of the relation of bolshevism to socialism and the world revolution. I'm sure if you ask him, the USSR was just a bunch of blanquists that wanted power.

He's quite knowledgeable of the history of socialism in the US and writes insightful books on capitalism, which is nice, but he has a liberal influence I despise.

[The Immortal Goon]

Pretty much what has already been said.

His thing about the USSR and USA both misusing the word socialist is essentially correct. This said, the USSR fudged (and I think this was a fatal flaw) more than blatantly lied in that it was attempting to build socialism. The thought that they had achieved it was ultimately harmful, but one could argue that the use of the word "democracy" in the west is rounded up in a similar way.

But Chomsky is an old liberal with socialist leanings. He's a utopian.

[Ambroise]

Pretty much what has already been said.

This.

But Chomsky is an old liberal with socialist leanings. He's a utopian.

It's a bit hard to tell. These days, if you listen to him, one would get the idea he's your standard left-liberal. His older stuff though, in the 70's and even dating back maybe just 10 years, he certainly does not hesitate in explicitly rejecting the capitalist mode of production and wage slavery(something you will find no mainstream liberal saying, who openly support capitalism). I think he is exactly what he claims to be; someone in the anti-authoritarian, libertarian tradition of socialism. He's certainly familiar with Marx, and although non-Marxist, he has spoken favourably of Council Communism. That's precisely what also makes him annoying at times. He seems to reject, perhaps a priori for nearly all cases, violence as a means for change, and he certainly rejects violent revolution. I don't know who it was that said it, but the phrase "anarchism is bourgeoisie-liberalism turned inside out" comes to mind. Whoever said the phrase probably meant something else but I think it applies in this case. What I find with a lot of the socialists and anarchists(particularly democratic socialists, something Chomsky probably identifies with) in America is, that they are inextricably trapped in the confines of liberalism even if they are socialists. So I think he is a socialist, but he has liberal leanings. It's a weird mix of socialism with liberalism.

[Noelnada]

I am fairly curiouse what will the hardcore socialists of pofo think about this.

I think Chomsky is quite right.

Doesn't mean authoritarian state-capitalism is necessarily a wrong way to pave the road towards socialism (well for Chomsky it is, as mentioned above).