Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 15:31:55 -0700 (PDT)
From: scouser <boomcloset-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] Re: the death of Edward W. Said


Well, “libertarian” is a pretty broad term, employed
by people from everyone right-wing Libertarian Party
members, to liberals, though to anarchists.  Said’s
use of term is not inconsistent with the postmodern
liberalism that basically seems to be where he was
coming from.

Regarding Chomsky, it’s interesting how many are so
quick to dismiss him as not a "real" anarchist on the
basis of his supposed reformism.  Reformism sees
reform as an end in itself.  However, one can be (and,
in my view, should be) in favour of reforms that
ameliorate conditions, while continuing to struggle
for more fundamental change.   This latter view is
consistent with anarchism and, in fact, has been,
historically, a position that most anarchists have
taken.  Anarchists have always involved themselves
with efforts for reform and some of the major sites of
anarchist struggle have been unabashedly reformist
(and thoroughly worthwhile), such as the fight for the
eight-hour day.  Taking part in such efforts doesn’t
mean forgoing the larger struggle.

So, I’m not sure that, for instance, Chomsky’s call
for strengthening the federal government so as to put
a check on corporate power, means that he’s thus not
anarchist.  It seems to me that properly evaluating
such a call requires an analysis at the level of
tactics – a weighing of the undesirable effects of
increased government power against the desirable
effects of diminished corporate power, the potential
for undermining longer term goals versus the more
tangible benefits that would flow in the here and now.
 Personally, I think that Chomsky’s making a bad call,
but I say so on the basis of a tactical evaluation –
not merely because what he’s advocating amounts to
reform.

And in the context of a post-structuralist encounter
with anarchism, don’t tactical considerations become
paramount?   If the approach is to find the pressure
points in the networks of micro-power, interstices in
the multiple intersecting lines of force and all that,
then I would contend that resistance centres on
tactical proposals like Chomsky’s.  One could argue
that turning one powerful institution (government)
against another (the corporate structure) with which
is intimately connected could be a very post-anarchist
thing to do.  

Certainly, a post-anarchist dismissal of Chomsky as
not a proper anarchist on the basis of his “reformism”
is ironic, to say the least. 

--- "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
> Why do you think he chose to use the term
> libertarian
> in that quote then? I am guessing this may have
> something to do with his close relationship with
> Noam
> Chomsky - who is also a rather proper liberal
> Enlightenment humanist but who is widely accepted as
> an anarchist at heart (obviously this could
> certainly
> be a 'wrong' interpretation but like Said he has
> self-identified that way). Said may be the type of
> intellectual who  doesnt really affiliate with any
> particular ideology per se but will accept Chomsky's
> description of anarchism as 'the confluence of
> liberalism and socialism' as agreeable since it is
> not
> terribly threatening in its acceptance of reformism
> and its not seen by most as being as dogmatic or
> reductionist as Marxism. I guess what I was trying
> to
> point out was that when someone calls themself
> libertarian it usually means *something* but yeah,
> from looking at Chomsky's record in this department
> it
> certainly doesn't mean that he is a full blown
> anarchist either - yet on the other hand it also
> doesn't mean he is not *sympathetic* since he did,
> in
> fact, use the term libertarian in this quote.
> 
>  
> 
> ====> "The world is the natural setting of and field for
> all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions.
> Truth does not 'inhabit' only 'the inner man' or
> more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in
> the world and only in the world does he know
> himself."
> 
> — Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945
> 
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