David Barsamian interview NOAM CHOMSKY
Information Clearing House (ICH)
Retrieved from Class Warfare, 1995, pp. 19-23, 27-31
David Barsamian: One of the heroes of the revival of the right ... is Adam Smith. You made some pretty impressive research on Smith, which brought to light ... a lot 'of information that are not coming out. This was often cited by exposing the "vile maxim of the masters of mankind: all for ourselves and nothing for others."
NOAM CHOMSKY: I did absolutely no research on Smith. I've only read about. There is a search. Just read it. It 's a pre-capitalist, a figure of the Enlightenment. What we would call capitalism he despised. Adam Smith should be read in fragments, the few phrases that teach school. Everyone reads the first paragraph of the Wealth of Nations , in which he speaks of how wonderful the division of labor. But not many get to the point, hundreds of pages later, stating that the division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it may be a human being. And therefore in any civilized society the government should take measures to prevent the division of labor comes to its limits.
He provided an argument in favor of the market, but the argument was that under conditions of perfect liberty, markets will lead to perfect equality. And 'This is the argument to Smith because he thought the same conditions (not just opportunity) was what one should aim for. It goes on and on. He offered a devastating critique of those who called politics of North and South. He spoke of England and India. Bitterly condemned the British experiments they were doing and were ravaging India.
Smith also made observations, which should be self-evident, the manner in which they operated states. He pointed out that it was totally absurd to speak of a nation and what we nowadays call "national interests". He simply noted in passing , because he was so ovvio, che in Inghilterra, il paese di cui parlava – e che rappresentava la società più democratica dell’epoca – i principali fautori della politica erano i "commercianti e i produttori" e questi si assicuravano che i propri interessi fossero, detto con parole sue, "curati in modo molto speciale" , qualunque fosse la conseguenza sugli altri, tra cui il popolo inglese che, sosteneva, soffriva a causa delle loro politiche. All’epoca non aveva a disposizione i dati per provarlo, ma è probabile che avesse ragione.
Questa verità lapalissiana è stata definita, un secolo dopo, analisi di classe ma non c’è bisogno di arrivare a Marx per trovarla. It 'very explicit in Adam Smith. It 's so obvious that even a child can see her for ten years. So do not put it in evidence. He just mentioned. But it is correct. If you read all of his work, it captures the intelligence of the author. He was a person that was the Enlightenment. The reasons that drove him was the assumption that people were guided by the understanding and feelings of solidarity and the need for control over their work, much like other thinkers of the Enlightenment and early Romanticism. It was part of that period, the Scottish Enlightenment.
Smith's version that is given nowadays is just ridiculous. But I did not have to do any research to find out. Just read. If you are able to read it is discovered. I did a little research on how it is treated, and this is interesting. For example, the University of Chicago, the great bastion of free market, etc.. Etc.., Published an edition of the bicentenary of this hero, scholars from an edition with notes and introduction by an Award Laureate, George Stigler, index, full-bodied, a real scholarly edition. And 'that I used. The best edition. The frame learned was very interesting, including the introduction of Stigler. In all likelihood did not Stigler mai aperto La ricchezza delle nazioni . Quasi tutto ciò che ha detto del libro è totalmente falso. Sono passato attraverso una serie di esempi scrivendo su questo argomento, in Anno 501 ed altrove.
In certo qual modo però l’indice è risultato anche più interessante. Adam Smith è arcinoto per la sua difesa della divisione del lavoro. Basta dare un’occhiata a "divisione del lavoro" nell’indice e si trova una gran quantità di cose elencate. Ma ne manca una, e cioè la sua condanna della divisione dl lavoro, quella che ho appena citato. Per un motivo o per l’altro nell’indice manca. Si va avanti così. Io non chiamerei questa una ricerca perché it's ten minutes of work, but if attention is paid to knowledge, then it is interesting.
me be clear on this point. There is a good culture on Smith. If you look at the serious studies on Smith, what I say is not a surprise to anyone. How could it be? You open the book, you read it and jump right in the eyes. On the other hand, if you look at the myth of Adam Smith, who is the only one who comes to us, the discrepancy with reality is enormous.
This is typical of classical liberalism in general. The founders of classical liberalism, people like Adam Smith and Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was one of the great exponents of classical liberalism, which inspired John Stuart Mill - we they would call libertarian socialists, at least this is how I read them. For example, Humboldt, as Smith says, consider a craftsman who builds some beautiful thing. According to Humboldt, where it is driven by external coercion, like the wage, salary, we can see what he does but we despise what he is. On the other hand, if it is part of the creative freedom to express himself, spontaneously, not motivated by external coercion of wage labor, then we also admire what he is because he is a human being. He stated that every acceptable socio-economic system would be based on the assumption that people have freedom to inform and create - as this is the fundamental nature of humans - in free association with others, but certainly not driven by the variety of external constraints that came to be called capitalism.
E 'the same if you read Jefferson. He lived half a century later, so he saw state capitalism developing and, of course, despised him. He claimed that he was carrying a form of absolutism worse than that against which we fought. In fact, following this period, there is a critical net, clear against what would later be called capitalism and certainly of that variant of capitalism typical of the twentieth century, designed to destroy capitalism, individual, and even the business world.
There is a secondary current which rarely pay attention, but that is just as fascinating. This is the literature of the working class of the nineteenth century. They had not read Adam Smith and Wilhelm von Humboldt, but they said the same things. Just read the newspapers published by these people call the "Lowell of young workers, girls who worked in factories, artisans and other workers who ran their own newspapers. It 'the same kind of criticism. There was a real battle fought by the workers in Britain and the United States to defend themselves against what they called the degradation, oppression and violence of the capitalist industrial system, which not only dehumanized them, but also drastically lowered their intellectual level. Then you go back to the mid-nineteenth century and these so-called "young workers", girls who worked in the factories of Lowell [Massachusetts], seriously read the contemporary literature. They realized that the essential point of the system was converted into tools that were manipulated, degraded, abused, and so on. It fought hard against it for a long time. Here is the story of the rise of capitalism.
The other part of the story concerns the development of big business, which is an interesting story in itself. Adam Smith did not say much about them, but he criticized the early stages. Jefferson lived long enough to see the beginning, and was strongly opposed to them. But the development of large companies have actually taken place very late in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Originally the company existed as a public service. The people came together to build a bridge and were associated with the state for this purpose. They built the bridge and what was it. It was believed they had a public function. Well, in the 70 states revoked the acts constituting the society. These were granted by the state. They had no authorization. Were fictitious. The states revoked the acts constituting the society because they serve no public function.
[That is, before people will associate freely for work of a public utility is limited in time. This was a "corporation" and the state ratified it.Following are born "large corporation", which replaced the "corporation" with their traditional model, which is potentially unlimited in time and profit oriented, and not to the public interest. Ed]
But then came the period of concentrations of undertakings and the various efforts to bring together the forces that were beginning to be realized in the late nineteenth century. It 's interesting to look at the literature. The courts actually do not recognize them. There were only hints in the matter. Only in the early twentieth century, courts and lawyers designed a new socioeconomic system. It's never been done through legislation, but most courts and lawyers and the power that they could exercise over individual states. New Jersey was the first state to grant the company all the rights they wanted. Naturally, the entire capital of the country suddenly began to flow into New Jersey, for obvious reasons. So the other states had to do the same simply to defend themselves, otherwise they would be swept away. It was a kind of globalization on a small scale. Then came forward the courts and lawyers of the society and created a doctrine completamente nuova che diede alle grandi imprese quell’autorità e quel potere che non avevano mai avuto prima. Esaminando lo scenario, ci si accorge che è lo stesso che portò al fascismo e al bolscevismo. Gran parte del processo è stato appoggiato da persone definite progressisti, per i seguenti motivi: essi affermavano che il tempo dei diritti individuali fosse finito. Si era in un periodo di accorpamento di potere, unione di potere, accentramento. Si presume che questo sia un fatto positivo, se si è un progressista come un marxista-leninista. Da quello stesso scenario provengono tre grandi cose: fascismo, bolscevismo, e tirannia delle grandi imprese. Sono tutte nate dalle stesse radici più o meno hegeliane. E’ abbastanza recente. We think that large firms are immutable, but they were designed. It 'was a conscious design which worked just as Adam Smith had said: the main architects of the policy focus on state power and use it for their own interests. Certainly it was not a popular will. Were essentially the decisions taken by courts and lawyers to have created a form of private tyranny which now is in many ways, stronger than it has ever been the state tyranny. These are the main roles of the modern history of the twentieth century. The classical liberals were horrified. They never even imagined this. But the little things you saw already made them shudder. Tutto ciò avrebbe assolutamente scandalizzato Adam Smith o Jefferson o chiunque la pensasse come loro...
BARSAMIAN: ...Lei è molto paziente con le persone, in particolare con le persone che fanno le domande più stupide. E’ un’abilità che ha coltivato?
CHOMSKY: Prima di tutto, di solito dentro fumo di rabbia, quindi ciò che si vede esteriormente non rappresenta necessariamente quello che c’è dentro. Ma per quanto riguarda le domande, l’unica cosa per cui mi innervosisco sempre sono gli intellettuali d’élite, trovo irritanti le stupidaggini che fanno. Non dovrei. Me le dovrei aspettare. Ma le trovo irritanti. D’altro canto, quelle che Lei descrive come domande stupide di solito mi danno l’impressione di domande perfettamente oneste. La gente non ha motivo di credere qualcos’altro rispetto a ciò che sta dicendo. Se si pensa da dove viene la persona che ci interroga, a quello a cui è stata soggetta, quella che fa è una domanda estremamente razionale ed intelligente. Può sembrare stupida da qualche altro punto di vista, ma non è affatto stupida nel quadro in cui viene sollevata. Di solito è abbastanza ragionevole. Quindi non c’è nulla per cui essere irritati.
Ci si può rammaricare delle circostanze in cui sorgono le domande. La cosa da fare è cercare di aiutarli ad uscire dal loro isolamento intellettuale which, as I said, it is purely accidental. There are huge factors that come into play in making people, borrowing the words of Adam Smith, "so stupid and ignorant as it may be a human being." Much of the education system, if you think about it, is designed for this purpose, is designed to obtain obedience and passivity. From childhood, much of this system is designed to prevent people from being independent and creative. If a school tends to be independent, then you probably will soon be in trouble. This is not the feature that is preferred or cultivated. When people go through all these things, and also Add to this, the corporate propaganda, la televisione, la stampa e tutta la massa, il diluvio continuo di distorsione ideologica, fa delle domande che da quel punto di vista sono del tutto ragionevoli...
BARSAMIAN: Alla Mellon lecture che Lei ha tenuto a Chicago... ha concentrato l’attenzione in primo luogo sulle idee di John Dewey e Bertrand Russell [per quanto riguarda l’istruzione]...
CHOMSKY: ...Erano idee estremamente libertarie. Dewey stesso proviene direttamente dalla borghesia statunitense. Coloro che leggessero ciò che effettivamente ha detto, lo considererebbero ora uno strano pazzo antiamericano o qualcosa del genere. Esprimeva il pensiero tradizionale prima ancora che il sistema ideologico distorcesse so grotesque tradition. It is now unrecognizable. For example, not only agreed with the whole tradition of the Enlightenment in affirming that "the end of production is to produce free people" - "free men", he said, but it was many years ago. That 's what the purpose of production, not to produce goods. It 'was a great theorist of democracy. There were many strands of democratic theory, different and conflicting, but what I'm talking believed that democracy required the destruction of private power. Dewey said that as long as there was control by individuals on the economic system to speak of democracy would have been a hoax. Essentially summarizes Adam Smith, Dewey said that politics is the shadow cast on the big business companies. " He said that reducing the shadow is not very useful. Even with the reforms would be tyrannical. This is essentially the vision of a classic liberal. The central point is that you can not even talk about democracy until we have democratic control of industry, commerce, banking transactions, on everything. That means the control by the people who work in institutions, and within the community.
These are basic ideas of anarchism and libertarian socialism dating directly to the Enlightenment, a product of that kind of vision we talked about earlier from classical liberalism. Dewey represented in the modern era, as did Bertrand Russell from another tradition, but once again with roots in the Enlightenment. These were two of the main, if not the major thinkers of the twentieth century, whose ideas are known almost as much as the real Adam Smith. This thing is a sign of how effective was the educational system, and the propaganda system, even in completely destroy in us the awareness of our own intellectual property direct.
Barsamian: In that same conference, You paraphrased Russell about education. She said that Russell was promoting the idea that education should not have seen as something that looks like a container filled with water, but rather to help a flower to grow in its own way ...
CHOMSKY: This is an idea of \u200b\u200bthe eighteenth century. I do not know if Russell knew ol'avesse reinvented, but it sounds typical of the literature of the early Enlightenment. And 'This is the image that was used ... Humboldt, the founder of classical liberalism, regarded education as unrolling a rope along which the child would develop, but in his own way. E 'can drive a little'. Here's how education should be seriously from nursery school to graduate. It 's so advanced in science, because there is no other way to do it.
[Possible interpretation: Chomsky considers the "Advanced Science" as based on their own creativity and thinking skills. In other words if you come to study at these levels, you can finally (well, you have to, because as he says there is no other way) to follow a path completely yours, unlike the standard model of traditional Western education coercive. Ed]
But most of the education system is completely different. The mass education has been designed to turn independent farmers in production tools docile and passive. That was his primary function. And do not you think people do not know. He knew it and fought against it. There was much resistance to mass education, because of this reason. It was also understood by the elite. Emerson once said something about how they were educating people to not resent his breath on her neck. If you educate them, through what we call 'education', they take control - "they" would who Alexander Hamilton called the "great beast" , the people. The anti-democratic thrust of the opinion in what are called democratic societies is davvero tremenda. E per una buona ragione. Perché più la società diventa libera, più la grande bestia diventa pericolosa e più bisogna stare attenti ad ingabbiarla in un modo o nell’altro.
D’altro canto ci sono delle eccezioni, e Dewey e Russell rientrano tra quelle. Ma sono del tutto emarginati e sconosciuti, benché tutti tessano le loro lodi come fanno con Adam Smith. Ciò che effettivamente hanno detto sarebbe considerato intollerabile nel clima autocratico dell’opinione dominante. L’elemento totalitario in questo caso è piuttosto sorprendente. Il fatto stesso che il concetto di "antiamericano" possa esistere - tralasciando il modo in cui viene usato – rivela una vena totalitaria che è abbastanza drammatica. Quel concetto, antiamericanismo – ha come unica vera controparte nel mondo moderno l’antisovietismo. Nell’Unione Sovietica il peggior crimine era quello di essere antisovietico. Ecco il marchio ufficiale di una società totalitaria: essere provvista di concetti come l’antisovietismo o l’antiamericanismo. Qui è considerato del tutto naturale. I libri che parlano di antiamericanismo, scritti da persone che sono sostanzialmente dei loro cloni stalinisti, sono tenuti in grande considerazione. Questo è vero per quanto riguarda le società angloamericane, che sorprendentemente sono le società più democratiche. Penso che in questo caso esista una correlazione... Con la crescita della libertà also increases the need to suppress and control the opinions, if you want to prevent the great beast to make something with his freedom ...
... A few years ago Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis, two economists, in their work on the U.S. education system ... have pointed out that the school system is divided into fragments. The part facing workers and the general population is in fact designed to impose obedience. But education for the elite can not possibly do it. In this case, it must promote creativity and independence, otherwise it will not be able to perform their task of making money. The same thing is seen in the press. That's why I read the Wall Street Journal the Financial Times and Business Week : Do I have to say its the truth. This is a contradiction that exists in the mainstream press. Take, for example, the New York Times or Washington Post. They have dual functions are contradictory. One function is to subdue the great beast. But another function is to allow their readers, who are part of the elite, to have a fairly realistic picture of what happens in the world, otherwise it would not be able to meet their own needs. This is a contradiction that passes directly through the educational system. It 's totally independent of another factor, namely their professional integrity that many people have: honesty, regardless of the constraints that come from outside. This leads to various complications. If you really look in detail how journalists work, it turns out that these contradictions and these problems develop in complex ways ...
David Barsamian interviews Noam Chomsky
Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19001.htm
04.01.2008
Link : http://www.comedonchisciotte.org/site/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4235&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
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