NOVEMBER 23, 2018
“The person who claims the legitimacy
of the authority always bears the burden of justifying it. And if they can’t
justify it, it’s illegitimate and should be dismantled. To tell you the truth,
I don’t really understand anarchism as being much more than that.”
—Noam Chomsky
On December 7, 2018, Noam Chomsky
turns 90 years old. In a 2013 Reader’s Digest poll of “The 100 Most Trusted People in
America” (topped by
Hollywood celebrities), Noam Chomsky, a self-described anarchist, ranked #20
(behind #19 Michelle Obama but in front of #24 Jimmy Carter). Given that
anti-authoritarians throughout U.S. history have been routinely shunned,
financially punished, psychopathologized, criminalized, and assassinated,
Chomsky’s surviving and thriving are remarkable.
In the early 1960s, when few
Americans were criticizing the U.S. government’s war in Vietnam, Chomsky was
among the first to challenge and resist it. He risked prison time and the loss
of an academic career in linguistics in which he had become highly esteemed for
his groundbreaking contributions. For more than a half century, Chomsky has
used his platform to challenge all illegitimate authorities, including the U.S.
government and oppressive regimes around the world. He has voiced a consistent
contempt for elite rule—for its atrocities as well as for its subversion of
working-class autonomy.
While Chomsky abhors any hero
worship—especially of himself—he does value what can be learned from human
experiments in living. In this spirit, examining Chomsky’s life has value for
anti-authoritarians seeking an understanding of how to survive.
Chomsky knows full well that luck has
been a major factor in his beating the odds, but even great luck is not enough
for a U.S. anarchist to survive and have a profound impact. Chomsky also
possesses extraordinary intelligence, Spinoza-like rationality, and great
wisdom about survival.
Examining the lives of both tragic
and triumphant U.S. anti-authoritarians in Resisting Illegitimate Authority, I found that those anti-authoritarians who have
thrived have had, in addition to good luck, wisdom about self-care, including
wisdom about relationships and money. Anti-authoritarians with more tragic
lives have often compounded authoritarian assaults on themselves with their own
self-destructive ones.
Chomsky describes his parents as
“normal Roosevelt Democrats,” although some other family members were leftist
radicals. In his childhood, Noam luckily began his education at Oak Lane, a
Deweyite experimental school where children were 00encouraged to think for
themselves and where creativity was more important than grades. All schools,
Chomsky believes, could be run like Oak Lane but won’t because no society
“based on authoritarian hierarchic institutions would tolerate such a school
system for very long.”
At Oak Lane, when he was ten, Noam
published an article in the school newspaper about the fall of Barcelona to
fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War—an influential event for Chomsky
then and throughout his life. Later, he read Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell’s account of the Spanish Civil War and
the briefly successful anarchist society in Spain.Chomsky’s early understanding
that people can rise up against oppressive systems and create cooperative
organization among themselves became part of the basis for his belief in
anarchism as a real possibility.
At age twelve, Noam entered Central
High School in Philadelphia, a highly regarded school but one that he hated,
“It was the dumbest, most ridiculous place I’ve ever been, it was like falling
into a black hole or something. For one thing, it was extremely
competitive—because that’s one of the best ways of controlling people.” He
remained in school but lost interest in it.
Similar to many intelligent
anti-authoritarian young people, young Noam loathed his standard schooling.
However, he had the wisdom to not equate schooling with education, and he
self-educated during his adolescence. At age 13, Noam commuted alone by train
to New York City to visit relatives. He spent many hours with an uncle who ran
a newsstand in Manhattan on 72nd Street, which was a lively “literary political
salon” where an adolescent Chomsky was exposed to radical politics and Jewish
working-class culture.
At age 16, Chomsky began
undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania but soon, like many
anti-authoritarian college students, became discouraged. Chomsky recalled,
“When I looked at the college catalogue it was really exciting—lots of courses,
great things. But it turned out that the college was like an overgrown high
school. After about a year I was going to just drop out and it was just by
accident that I stayed in.” Luckily, he connected with Zellig Harris, a
charismatic linguistic professor, which resulted in Noam remaining in
academia—and ultimately becoming a renowned linguist.
Chomsky’s early interests actually
were political, not linguistic. He recalled, “I had, from childhood, been
deeply involved intellectually in radical and dissident politics, but
intellectually.” Ultimately, intellectual involvement was not enough. Chomsky
tells us, “I’m really a hermit by nature, and would much prefer to be alone
working than to be in public.”
What is psychologically impressive
about the temperamentally introverted Chomsky is that he has actively engaged
with the world. I have found that one key to those rare anti-authoritarians who
triumph is their willingness to transcend their psychological comfort zone.
By his thirties, Chomsky had become a
highly regarded linguist, and in the early 1960s, he became one of the first
intellectuals to publicly condemn the Vietnam War. After dissent against the
war widened in the United States, Chomsky modestly recounts, “I knew that I was
just too intolerably self-indulgent merely to take a passive role in the
struggles that were then going on. And I knew that signing petitions, sending
money, and showing up now and then at a meeting was not enough. I thought it
was critically necessary to take a more active role, and I was well aware of
what that would mean.” For ten years, Chomsky refused paying a portion of his
taxes, supported draft resisters, was arrested several times, and was on
Richard Nixon’s official enemies list.
Given the potential consequence of
his political stand, Noam and his wife Carol (married to Noam from 1949 until
her death in 2008) wisely agreed that it made sense for Carol to return to
school and get a PhD so she could support the family if he was put in prison.
He later recounted, “In fact, that is just what would have happened except for
two unexpected events: (1) the utter (and rather typical) incompetence of the
intelligence services. . . . [and] (2) the Tet Offensive, which convinced American
business that the game wasn’t worth the candle and led to the dropping of
prosecutions.” Carol Chomsky ultimately secured a position at Harvard’s School
of Education, and she also went on to have a successful academic career. And so
with luck and wise choices, the Chomsky family had two excellent incomes and
financial security.
Chomsky has also had the wisdom not
to fall prey to the self-destructive tendency of some anti-authoritarian
activists who deny their full humanity. Chomsky’s wisdom here is
psychologically helpful for young anti-authoritarians: “Look, you’re not going
to be effective as a political activist unless you have a satisfying life.”
Chomsky tells audiences, “None of us are saints, at least I’m not. I haven’t
given up my house, I haven’t given up my car, I don’t live in a hovel, I don’t
spend 24 hours a day working for the benefit of the human race, or anything
like that. In fact, I don’t even come close.” A 2003 New Yorker profileabout Chomsky quotes one of his friends: “He likes to
be out of doors in the summer, he likes to swim in the lake and go sailing and
eat junk food.”
Chomsky models an activist who
neither denies nor self-flagellates about financial hypocrisies that are
impossible to avoid in a society that requires money to survive. When employed
by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky was candid about the
reality that even though the U.S. government’s Department of Defense was not
funding him directly, because the DOD was funding other MIT departments, such
funding allowed MIT to pay him. “As far as the moral issue goes,” Chomsky
remarked, “It’s not as if there’s some clean money somewhere. If you’re in a
university, you’re on dirty money—you’re on money which is coming from people
who are working somewhere, and whose money is being taken away.”
Many anti-authoritarians have great
anger. This anger has resulted from social injustices and their dissent being
ignored; from authoritarian assaults on them; from witnessing the
marginalization of their anti-authoritarian friends; and from resentment over
being forced into constant vigilance. The manner in which anti-authoritarians
deal with their anger is critical to tragedy or triumph. While one can see
Chomsky’s anger in his biting sarcasm, for the most part, he has not
self-sabotaged with his anger. All anti-authoritarians are pained by
illegitimate authorities, however, Chomsky has not compounded that pain with
self-destructive or violent reactions that provide authoritarians with
justification for oppression.
With both his wisdom and luck,
Chomsky has more than survived to become one of the most influential anarchists
in U.S. history, an inspiring model for millions of anti-authoritarians,
especially young ones. He has modeled taking seriously critical thinking and
truth—not mainstream credentials and official badges. The truths asserted by
Noam Chomsky have been powerful challenges to authoritarian society, but
perhaps even more powerful, especially for young anti-authoritarians, is his
modeling of an unbroken human being.
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