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drunkfrenchman wrote

I think Chomsky has expressed his support for Libertarian schools. Saying it was part of the backbone of the revolution in Spain.

In Understanding Power, in the section titled "Anti-Intellectualism", he repeatedly comes out against the elevation of academics as something superior

These are funny words, actually. I mean, the way it's used, being an "intellectual" has virtually nothing to do with working with your mind: those are two different things. My suspicion is that plenty of people in the crafts, auto mechanics and so on, probably do as much or more intellectual work as plenty of people in universities. There are big areas in academia where what's called "scholarly" work is just clerical work, and I don't think clerical work's more challenging mentally than fixing an automobile engine-in fact, I think the opposite: I can do clerical work, I can never figure out how to fix an automobile engine.

He adds that his knowledge about politics is more about being privileged than being an "intellectual"

That's right-but you see, that's a reflection of privilege, not a reflection of intellectual life. The fact is that if you're at a university, you're very privileged. For one thing, contrary to what a lot of people say, you don't have to work all that hard.

If Chomsky wants to push education, "intellectualism" and such, he is clearly concerned by who wields this power and knowledge.

If by "intellectual" you mean people who are a special class who are in the business of imposing thoughts, and framing ideas for people in power, and telling everyone what they should believe, and so on, well, yeah, that's different. Those people are called "intellectuals"-but they're really more a kind of secular priesthood, whose task is to uphold the doctrinal truths of the society. And the population should be anti-- intellectual in that respect, I think that's a healthy reaction.

Finally, I agree with all the points that you made, but I don't think Chomsky defends that.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

The thing is, Chomsky is always talking about the history, which makes him a very useful introduction to anarchist ideas and the context in which we should be considering them. A lot of the things he talks about, are basically not addressed in contemporary discourse outside of him and very few other of these "public intellectuals".

However the major issue I'm raising is that he rarely takes things into a present-day context. It's easy to venerate these old guys from the anarchist canon, it's much more difficult to say, this is an anarchist project in my own area which I am invested in, and this is how I am contributing to the interrogation of my own privilege besides merely talking about it.

But that's the thing, right? He is that professional academic, and due to that socially prescribed role there's stuff he won't or can't really talk about. It always has to be alienated through the lens of history or something else that can be studied, it can never really be too close to the here and now for him. Which is why as an anarchist you can always appreciate the role he plays in the radicalization process, and what I think is his compelling (albeit a bit dry) writing about a variety of subjects, but likewise recognize that this is someone who is pretty much stuck in their own form of daily-life conservatism and isn't going to have much useful insight about how anarchism is going to work outside of this academic context.

In his best moments, like some of the statements here, he acknowledges this. But it's important to recognize that he can't move past that roadblock either.

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drunkfrenchman wrote

Oh, yes, in that case I entirely agree.

I think I missed how one could see his views as rather lacking probably because I learned about Chomsky after already being an anarchist so I just took his work for what it is. I agree that there does seem to be quite a bit of left wingers (or even liberals?) who see Chomsky as a perfectly enlightened man who holds all the solutions.

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