[KurtFF8]

I read Zizek talking about Chomsky in Zizek's "Revolution at the Gates Zizek on Lenin The 1917 Writings"

It is crucial to emphasize this relevant of "high theory" for the most concrete political struggle today, when even such an engaged intellectual as Noam Chomsky likes to underscore how unimportant theoretical knowledge is for progressive political struggle : of what help is studying great philosophical and social-theoretical texts in today's struggle against the neoliberal model of globalization? Is it not that we are dealing either with obvious facts (which simply have to be made public, as Chomsky is doing in his numerous political texts), or with such an incomprehensible complexity that we cannot understand anything? If we wish to argue against this anti-theoretical temptation, it is not enough to draw attention to numerous theoretical presuppositions about freedom, power and society, which also abound in Chomsky's political texts: what is arguably more important is how, today, perhaps for the first time in the history of humankind, our daily experience (of biogenetics, ecology, cyberspace and Virtual Reality) compels all of us to confront basic philosophical issues of the nature of freedom and human identity, and so on.

It's interesting the criticisms that Zizek brings up about Chomsky here, I think they can be applied to many Anarchists today: the problems of the world don't require any sort of analysis or theoretical argument.

This is a problem with many of the US left in general, and this articlegoes into it quite a bit more specifically for groups like SDS and USAS.

[Goldberk]

I take it from the extract that Zizek is arguing that complex theoretical knowledge is needed not only to understand the world but to resist. I then take it that his critique of Chomsky is that Chomsky denies the importance, however a problem with this is that it privilages a kind of academic formation of knowledge into theoretical frameworks, an elitist view that refuses to recognise the wide variety of ways knowledge and world views can be presented.

[alos]

I know this is a late reply and that no one may read it, but here are my two cents on this:

I have the same critique of chomsky that zizek has. Simply put, if facts alone changed anything then why is Chomsky still talking while the Left is still dead (at least in the US, where I live)? Not only that, but when someone asks Chomsky why people in the US are so anti-intellectual he says that people are intellectual-something to the tune of "fixing a car requires intellect, people are intellectual." Of course everything we do requires intellect, man! I don't know if he was evading the question (I read it in a book, I believe "Understanding Power") or trying to show his solidarity to the working class or whatever. It is obvious what the question was about. For some reason people in the US are very anti-theory. Chomsky is too. I believe it goes back to the philosophers that influenced him, Russel and Dewey. I haven't read them, but my guess is they are very pragmatic and worship the facts. I don't know much about philosophy, but this might be an influence of the British philosophers-someone please shed some light on this if I'm wrong. Facts are only half the story. How you interpret those facts, now that's the more difficult part. For that you need theory. Besides, why be bombarded with facts when we already know that the CIA kills people, that US bombs the third world to smithereens, etc etc etc. We already know this! What we need more of is theory! Facts, yes, but also theory! The world is not so simple, you know!

And I do believe, like someone above said, that this is typical of the US Left (anarchists, too). They subordinate theory to practice and that's just not smart. This is why Marxism is important. Back when I identified as an anarchist I loved reading Chomsky and other books on anarchy, but I found them theoretically deficient. I leave you with some Marcuse:

"Theory accompanies the practice at every moment, analyzing the changing situation and formulating its concepts accordingly. The concrete conditions for realizing the truth may vary, bu the truth remains the same and theory remains its ultimate guardian. Theory will preserve the truth even if revolutionary practice deviates from its proper path. Practice follows truth, not vice-versa" (Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, 322).

[Kricket0960]

I think that when Chomsky says something like fixing a car requires intellect, what he means is that the American population has been so heavily propagandized that its attention doesn't even fall on what left intellectuals would consider serious issues; however, in areas where their attention IS "allowed" to go, they develop an understanding and complexity that goes beyond the superficial and requires real intelligence to comprehend. I seem to remember one video where he mentioned that, if you look at the complexity with which sports are studied, you find lay people with little education, people that are generally considered "not intelligent", and yet they follow these highly complex analyses of everything around the game.

Personally, I'm always impressed with the sheer amount of knowledge in the guy's head. When I first listened to him there were a lot of things at which I rolled my eyes or found a little beyond belief - but I've since come to have the impression that, even if it seems like he's just muttering or bitching, he can back up every word with solid facts.

[Northern-Anarchist-X]

Also, there is a bit of theory behind anarchism, the movement isn't as elitist, however, and it's not as prominent.

Nevertheless, what anarchists actually lack is a complete work of political philosophy to back it up, that would be nice. It would make anarchism less ignorable by the elitists in society, who really do fail to even explore it. In general a commitment to this complete work of thought would help hurt the ignorance regarding anarchism, and make it's arguments much clearer.

This forum is a great example. Everyone once and a while someone brings up a practical non-issue with anarchism (how do we defend it) without actually considering the theory itself, perhaps in part because it's not synthesized in any meaningful way. Generally I find once people are exposed to anarchist ideas they agree with them: the trouble is having synthesized thought behind these ideas to make them more intellectually pervasive, and building a stronger political movement.

[Goldberk]

Perhaps it would be fundamentally un-anarchist to have an overarching theory?

[Northern-Anarchist-X]

I disagree. Overarching is the wrong word. A philosophy that seeks the truth and is not imposed like a gospel (Santayana is a good example of an occasionally modest philsopher, the antonym of Nietzsche ...) is not by necessity overarching. A synthesis of thought, a connect the dots is not inherently hierarchal or illegitimate afaik.

If thinking isn't part of anarchism, I need a new word for myself:

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" - Emma Goldman

It is if anything fundamentally un-anarchist (double negative alert lol) it is an insistence that it is wrong to seek the truth and synthesize knowledge into coherent theory.

Anarchists aren't opposed to organization, but illegitimate organization.

That sort of reiterates my point ...

There are so many misunderstandings and a hodge podge of ideas, that they should be eliminated and synthesized and reasoned for persuasivley respectively.

[Goldberk]

There are so many misunderstandings and a hodge podge of ideas,

Surely a synthesized theory is only valid if it contains a small amount of core elements. Critique of state, civilization and Patriarchy for example, any wider and the theory gets consumed by schism.

[Ombrageux]

The trouble with Leftist theory is that it is largely the preserve of cloistered academics and idle (middle class) students. Since the 1970s especially, theory and the Left's concern with moral life has largely been about taking positions and speaking truth to power, but not actually doing something. This is partly the result of social and political changes. In America the end of the Vietnam War and conscription made the peace movement gradually lose relevance, the end of legal segregation and the backlash against Black Power destroyed Leftism in the Black community. In Europe, the affluent society took its toll on the working class's coherence, but a fairly robust democratic (and mainstream!) Left persisted into the 1980s.

All this is contrast to Leftist intellectuals especially prior to the Second World War, who were also political leaders. They were organic intellectuals, to use Gramsci's expression, in that the text they produced was inscribed in and served a political reality. It wasn't just some "man of letters" pontificating lovely universalist phrases from the security of tenured academia or a journalist's desk. And here, I think relevant leaders include: Jean Jaurès, Rosa Luxemburg, the prewar German Democratic Socialists, Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks in general, Antonio Gramsci, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X and others. Since then, the affluent consumer society has gradually destroyed the proletariat as a coherent entity, and replaced political parties with deep roots in this or that sector of society, with the media and personality driven politics of today. We see this manifestation in the end of Eurocommunism in Italy and Spain, the death of "Old Labour" and normalization of the French Socialist party.

Today, it is not easy to find (good) "engaged intellectuals" who actually are integrated into political movements and the masses. (Even as there are LOTS of good political commentators and academics, for example, in the U.S., but they are alienated from politics and, for the most part, broader society.) As I have returned to France, I am learning a great deal more about politics here. There are some very interesting groups emerging which have genuine Leftist theorizing being done and to be done. I think in particular of:
* Olivier Besancenot's (the postman Trotskyist) New Anticapitalist Party
* Houria Bouteldja's Movement of the Natives of the Republic, France's answer to Malcolm X, with inspiration from Fanon, Lumumba, Allende and so on. It claims to be the new voice for "non-White France". She is an extremely lucid and passionate speaker on television, I await her books as her analysis of political controversies and structural factors is always very good.
* Daniel Cohn-Bendit's Greens: operating in France and Germany, with substantial seats at the European parliament, we have an alternative home for all those young, critical intellectuals/radicals of 1968. Very good on European integration, anti-militarism, Israel etc.

I am sure there are equivalents in other countries.

In reality, contemplative and working life cannot be completely separated as all men are intellectuals and even academics must earn their bread. However, a political movement (just like a human life) cannot be truly successful if it does not reconcile action with thought. Thought without action is nothing. Action without thought is incoherence. That is what the Left has increasingly had in more and more countries since Bolshevik Revolution. Either we have intellectuals keeping their moral purity through impotence ("luxuriating in their own irrelevance," to quote Barney Frank) or we have politicians with no purpose other than their own careerism and self-agrandizement (Mitterrand, Blair, Clinton). The solution, if there is one, is to found movements whose aim is not power and influence in and of itself, but which answer real community needs and attempt to make the link with the masses, but remain faithful in discipline to certain principles for which they would forsake power. The leaders of such movements would be genuine politician-intellectuals who would have both the ability to organize and make links with their communities, while at the same time articulating the principles which (in ever-changing circumstances) they must remain faithful to. The Left, famously sectarian, could never agree on every principle, but a few we might cite strong inclinations towards pacifism, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, effective socio-economic equality and the putting of the needs of human beings ahead of those of business. The practical policies these would entail would differ somewhat from place to pace but I think you can imagine them.

[DubiousDan]

It seems to me that no one has addressed the major factor in the dominance of the commercial oligarchy in the West. That factor is television. The oligarchies in these countries are marketers. In short, hucksters. Their livelihood depends on the their marketing skills. They compete based on their ability to sell products that by and large, no one really needs.
In the United States, entertainment is largely funded by commercials. Since that is the financial base of the television industry, those who advertise have enormous influence on the television industry.
Actually, by and large, in an age of conglomerates, the advertisers are often the owners of the stations.
This means that the socioeconomic class that controls the media in the United States are capitalists by profession. For some strange reason, the prevalent socioeconomic theory in the United States reflects the interests of those who control the media.
Newspapers ere something someone read in a half hour and forgot about. Television is there continuously. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, no one is forced to watch television. If the government tried to ban it, there would probably be a revolution.
The preoccupation with television has all of the symptoms of an addiction, with the addicts requiring ever increasing doses of sex and violence. That would explain the ever loosening controls on content in the media. It wasn’t liberal ideology, it was profit that drove it.
By and large, liberal ideology was disseminated by the small press and small circulation magazines, as well as clubs.
All of these are in decline due to the dominance of television. In addition, television’s influence starts at childhood and continues until death. It doesn’t require literacy, and its method of propaganda is difficult to analyze because of it’s transitory nature.
Unlike print, it allows the demagogue the full exercise of his power. Imagine a man like Hitler having access to every home in a nation.

In a large pseudo democracy, we vote for people whom we don’t know and for issues that we don’t understand. How we vote is influenced by events in the World of which we have no personal knowledge. Artificial reality was not first created by computers, it was first created by television. It is the reality that we live in, and it controls our reality construct. Obviously, those who control television have enormous power. Why then is it surprising that they get what they want?

[Northern-Anarchist-X]

Surely a synthesized theory is only valid if it contains a small amount of core elements. Critique of state, civilization and Patriarchy for example, any wider and the theory gets consumed by schism.

I'm not talking addressing every political issue. What would be done instead is creating a politically philosophical theory which gives the concept of anarchism deeper meaning, not addressing specific political issues. believe, for instance, you can trace much anarchist thought to other concepts, like Hegelian/Marxist history, free will vs. determinism, etc. The nature of human rights etc.

[Goldberk]

The trouble with Leftist theory is that it is largely the preserve of cloistered academics and idle (middle class) students.

Absoloutely true and a very impoprtant point.

Today, it is not easy to find (good) "engaged intellectuals" who actually are integrated into political movements and the masses.

Do you think it possible to include Zizek and Chomsky in this catorgory.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit's Greens: operating in France and Germany, with substantial seats at the European parliament, we have an alternative home for all those young, critical intellectuals/radicals of 1968. Very good on European integration, anti-militarism, Israel etc.

Perhaps the best of those listed as it is not consumed by class hatred and envy.

I am sure there are equivalents in other countries.

Unfortunately not so much in the UK.

That factor is television.

"the society of the spectacle"?

politically philosophical theory which gives the concept of anarchism deeper meaning

Are you proposing an abstract set of codified principles to guide anarchist theory? If so I would consider such an idea of being completely out out of step with what I consider to be fundamentally anarchist, in brief an emphesis on human connection and relationship as the legitamate base for society, decentralised, autonomous agent communities and the femenisation of human ethics and morality in contrast to masculinist civilization.

[DubiousDan]

Are you proposing an abstract set of codified principles to guide anarchist theory? If so I would consider such an idea of being completely out out of step with what I consider to be fundamentally anarchist, in brief an emphesis on human connection and relationship as the legitamate base for society, decentralised, autonomous agent communities and the femenisation of human ethics and morality in contrast to masculinist civilization.

I’m having problems with this. I don’t think NA is locked into a set of rules. I’m not. I’m a Taoist, and that’s not the way Taoists think. However, it seems that you feel that he must be instep with your rules. I fail to see much difference in exchanging one set of rules for another. As a Taoist, I prefer the feminine, but in order to yield there must be something to yield to. If one always yields then what is the point of yielding? One yields at the right moment, to the right direction, and to the right degree, to guide action. And of course, there is a limit to Yin as there is to Yang. After all, we must not forget the eyes of the fishes.
The beauty of Anarchy is that we are free to do our thing, and my thing might not be your thing. Why ethics and why morality, why can’t we just follow our natures? Is there something so evil in our natures? We were born to be Human, so why not be Human? The problem is not with being Human. The problem is being what we think we should be.

[HoniSoit]

Noam Chomsky likes to underscore how unimportant theoretical knowledge

Chomsky is not saying theoretical knowledge is unimportant; rather he takes problem with popular academic 'theories' which 1) often don't make much sense and 2) obscure and obstruct our understanding. Then academics get so caught in debating the intricacies of 'theories' at the expense of carefully documenting and analysing what's actually taking place as to render themselves irrelevant to real world struggle.

To see who's correct on this issue, pick up books by Chomsky and Zizek and see from which book you can learn the most that is relevant to progressive politics.

[Northern-Anarchist-X]

Are you proposing an abstract set of codified principles to guide anarchist theory? If so I would consider such an idea of being completely out out of step with what I consider to be fundamentally anarchist, in brief an emphesis on human connection and relationship as the legitamate base for society, decentralised, autonomous agent communities and the femenisation of human ethics and morality in contrast to masculinist civilization.

Not really.

I was more saying that something that legitimizes or provides a rationale for the:

" human connection and relationship as the legitamate base for society, decentralised, autonomous agent communities and the femenisation of human ethics and morality in contrast to masculinist civilization." as you put it, as opposed to assuming those things as self-evidently desirable.

[Imperial Spaghetti]

what I consider to be fundamentally anarchist, in brief an emphesis on human connection and relationship as the legitamate base for society, decentralised, autonomous agent communities and the femenisation of human ethics and morality in contrast to masculinist civilization.

Sounds really inviting. But I wonder how this is different from the existing ideologies of the non-existent left in Western societies? How do we put this into practice?

[Kropotkin]

To see who's correct on this issue, pick up books by Chomsky and Zizek and see from which book you can learn the most that is relevant to progressive politics.

I agree. After reading Hegemony or Survival and Failed States, I felt my understanding several political matters broadened. I also liked Chomsky's jargon-free, fact-supported writing with extensive references for anyone who wishes to investigate on their own.

[SecretSquirrel]

why do you folks consider anarchism to be progressive? Progressivism is all about the State and increasing its oversight

[Melodramatic]

why do you folks consider anarchism to be progressive? Progressivism is all about the State and increasing its oversight

Progressivism is by definition the opposite of conservatism, and the call for change. Anarchy, in its call to destroy the state, whether peacefully or violently, is both. also in recent times the majority of anarchists are red anarchists, or have at least a minor socialist leaning, which are perhaps even true the the historical definition of Progressivism.

[KurtFF8]

Progressivism is all about the State and increasing its oversight

That's simply a mis-definition of that term.