/lit/ - Literature

>if you're a communist why are you supporting capitalism by the lecture circuit, paid media interviews, teaching at universities

>>6806732
could be an attempt to use the capitalist machinery against itself. y'know, lecturing for money and working a job where you spread the word about the system's inevitable demise.
not saying I agree, just saying that's probably along the lines of how both they and their supporters justify it.
also, I know I'm being coaxed into a snafu and everything, but all people are hypocrites.
maybe just take the IDEAS you like from people and ignore their personal lives?

>>6806492
His work in linguistics was funded by the US military through MIT.

>>6806830
Cuck

>>6806492
>you can't critique a system AND take part in it

grow up NEET faggot

>>6806492
I don't hate Chompsky as much as his undergrad defense force.

>>6807019

If Hitler gives me $100 does that make me a Nazi if I take it?

>>6807033
you can't really take part of a system and espouse its removal at the same time. there's a difference between criticisms of capitalism, which is in favour of reform, and marxism, which is in favour of revolution. until I see marxists actually committing to their communist ideals and succeeding in finding alternatives to capitalism that work i.e. aren't 3rd world shitholes, instead of living cushy capitalist lives, I can't take them seriously.

>>6807068
I think... yes? A supporter at least.

>>6807079
Chomsky isn't a Marxist.

Commies are idiots, what do you expect? 70% or so of the commies I've met have been wealthy young women ages 15 to 20 with some Tumblr gender and sexuality.

The majority of the remainder are equally hypocritical males, whilst the minority of the minority are actual working-class people.

>>6807091
*generic anti-capitalist flavour of the month

my mistake

>>6807088
How do you figure that?

>>6806492
What proof do you have?

>>6807098
>>6807079
Its funny because you praise capitalism without owning at least 1000 sweatshop slaves. Before achieving that, you cannot expect me to take any of what you are saying serious.

>>6807128
I don't praise capitalism though.

>>6807079
>being unable to separate ideas from people

>>6807133
>only cares about theory and not praxis
wow, it's almost like it's a marxism general.

>>6807128
try harder m8

>>6807175
>Only cares about practice and doesn't care about theory

>>6807079
marxists *want* third world shitholes though

>>6807068
Well they did execute people during the war trials for that so

>>6806492
Why do I care how much bread he keeps in the Caribbean or wherever? He's an intellectual and selling books is how he makes a posh living. Nothing about the status of his bank account keeps me from using his research.

>>6807019
>His work in linguistics was funded by the US military through MIT.

My wages are funded by my boss's capital, but that doesn't make me a capitalist, you know?

>>6807079
>you can't really take part of a system and espouse its removal at the same time.

I'm pretty sure I can work a job while planning to hang my boss. You have to be working to organize your work-place, buddy.

>>6806492
because leftists are stupid. liberals specifically

Zizek buys his son Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. If you've watched any Yu-Gi-Oh you'd know it takes place in hyper-capitalist societies.

How is he not a hypocrite?

>>6807349
waiting for the huffpo article from zizek aobut how yu gi oh is the distillation of pure ideology

>>6807291
You're just jealous that a commie makes more money than you.

>>6807456
ayyyyyyy lmao

>>6807291
>leftists
>liberals

Choose one ameritard

>>6807101
Chomsky has been a anarcho-syndicalist since before your dad knew how to jerk off, m8

>>6807468
you're really stupid aren't you

>>6807512
Most likely, you are.

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

>>6807468
>Americans will literally never understand this

>>6807586
>I don't understand how language games and referrents work

>>6807597
but my blatent socialist generalizations!! LEFT IS BAD! RIGHT IS RIGHT!

>>6807088
He's taking money away from Hitler, not taking would help his war effort, you nazi.

>>6807586
>liberals are left of center
>left
>leftists are also left of center
you dumb fucking indoctrinated faggot. learn to think for yourself you stupid fuck

Why do people take Zizeks jokes seriously?

But, you know, Stalin did nothing wrong. He was the victim.

>>6807650
You didn't open the link did you?

I think this mistake comes from the fact that the american political spectrum takes (economic) liberalism as a fact, and not a topic of discussion. You are not even alloud to think of anything else economically.
Therefore, when a americunt hears "liberal", the first thing that comes to mind is the commonsense notion of " culturally liberal" which has very little to do with the right x left discussion.

>>6807285
If you're organizing, then that's great. Praxis is all that matters. It's probably for a trade union, which is reformism, than overthrowing, securing the means of production and hanging your boss, which I don't see ever happening.

>>6807285
>edgy teenage marxist detected
Keep biding your time until the revolution brother, Our katanas will bathe in the blood of the bourgeoisie pigdogs

>>6807098
Marxism has always been by and for bourgeois white academics.

>wants to start an argument
>begins with "stupid liberals"
>single aspect of one person's life

This post specifically is probably a troll but if it isn't... All I can say is "this is why no one takes us seriously"

>>6807716
>You are not even alloud to think of anything else economically.
Explain why american students think capitalism is a white supremacist heteropatriarchal hegemony and think libertarians are the axis of evil.

>>6807098
this. Whenever the upper white class marxists actually have to interact with the poor, like in Occupy Wall street, they self segregate so to avoid the dirty poor people and the rich enlightened communist trust fund hipsters make the decisions for the stupid lowerclass people.

>>6807786
>Explain why american students think capitalism is white supremacist
maybe because the world they live in is defined by rules a bunch of rich white slave-owners made up a couple centuries ago? ya fucken dummy?

>>6807786
You are just proving my point. Your comical response its the very ideological mechanism throughout every discussion beyond the democrat x republican paradigm is pushed away from your comprehension.

>do you even ideology

>>6807922
Im the one who this guy was answering to. Your response is valid, but I do not agree totally with this. The real power is within the financial monopoly, the racial supremacy ideology its just a tool for sustain it. And not the only one.

>>6807953
>the real power is within the financial monopoly
okay, but you have to admit that this financial monopoly is controlled largely (mostly? probably) by white men and try to understand why this is significant to non-white/non-males analyzing the situation
>inb4 implying jews are white

>>6807971
Yes, totally. I belive in the "acting in both fronts" kind of thing. The material consequences of racism must be fought daily, but when it comes to desmantling the power, simply eliminating racism will not do it.

>>6807786
Source on that ? Americans students are willing to indebt themselves for a better spot on the corporate treadmill.

>>6808150
no, he's not talking about the good capitalist engineering majors, he is talking about the bad cultural marxists who are seizing control of our campuses (and infiltrating our governments at all levels probably)

>>6808160
ALL LEVELS
L
L

L
E
V
E
L
S

>>6808150
Source is academia m8

>>6807936
>he doesn't agree with me, he must be a simpleton

>>6807586
If you'd read the nyt once, you'd know.

>>6807128
Such a shitty metaphor

>>6807936
Why are you arguing, either hes an idiot or a troll, probably both, and in both cases he's not worth anyone's time.

He's the type of guy that uses wikipedia prescriptively. You're essentially arguing with a horse.

>>6807285
>My wages are funded by my boss's capital, but that doesn't make me a capitalist, you know?

Actually it does, and apparently a hypocrite since you deny that you're one.

>>6806492
On one hand you have a liberal socialist called Chomsky who contributed to linguistics and has a lot of cash, on the other hand there's Zizek, a junkie who makes perverted jokes.
Which one you choose?

>>6809079
>I haven't read Zizek

We can agree that his "lecture" persona is a pseudointellectual stand-up comedy of sorts, but his writing is actually decent.

>>6806492
YOU AGAIN
STOP POSTING THIS
IT IS BORING AND YOU GET WRECKED EVERY TIME

>>6809020
Ugh you're wrong stop
If he doesn't own capital he isn't a capitalist
If he's using his labor for his boss and not making more than the value of his labor then he isn't a capitalist

>>6809134
You're fooling yourself if you think his contributions to any field are significant or that his writing is actually insightful.
>Isn't Hitchcock just like Lacan, Hegel, and Marx?
>I fucking love studying ideology, you know, Stalin, etc.
>Here's a lengthy passage where I demonstrate either a lack of will or a simple inability to understand some thinker and twist his ideas completely out of shape to give my reader a hare-brained and factually incorrect lesson in the history of philosophy
>I'm going to do theology as an atheist XD the State is God marching through history, Lacan Über Alles

>>6807042
Fucking this.

>>6806732
>>6806830
>>6807068
No one is saying you need to "drop out" in order to be consistently anti-capitalist. The problem with Chomsky is, he lives an arguably lavish lifestyle and has no qualms about it, which flies in the face of his alleged "anti-capitalist" principles (which I don't think he even holds anymore).

I live outside of Boston and know people who know the "Chomster" personally. He is wealthy as all get out. He has two homes, one on the Charles River and one in a very bourgie part of Lexington (which has an extremely high median income). My pals have been to his Lexington home, too. He does not live modestly.

Compare this to Peter Lamborn Wilson, who does advocate dropping out and doesn't even own a television.

>>6809232
Well... That's just like... Your opinion.

>>6809332
Also, Chomskytards fail to realize that Chomsky's "praxis" (if you can call it that) has been proven wrong time and time again. We don't have a radical labor movement in the US, and chances of reviving the one that existed decades ago will probably never happen. Unions in the US are practically non-existent, and the ones that do exist are nothing radical. Technology will soon replace the workers who would be unionized. Even if it doesn't, most working Americans do not seem to want to organize. If they did, the IWW would be huge.

>>6809356
chomsky's just liberal masturbation fodder.

like a lot of his fans will always defend him by saying: "he's not supposed to tell you what to do, you just have to figure it out for yourself."

OK then, so how is chomsky any different than, say, the frankfurt school boys who were just pretentiously whining about how much capitalism has corrupted western culture?

face it, chomsky contributes nothing to any anti-capitalist struggle. he's only good for getting liberals to think twice about american foreign policy.

>individuals in Late Capitalism eschewing the ideological purity of a Pessimistic Neoplatonist Existentialism which rejects all realities not empirically-verifiable for continental philosophies driven by political motives and purely conjectural, untestable theories of identity, gender, and sexuality

>2015 C.E.

i seriously hope you guys step outside of the cave

>>6809332
Maybe it's because communists are scam artists that tell people what they want to hear.

the world as it exists right now could not be realized under a Marxist communism that provides all workers with equal shares and benefits. economists have visited this point time and time again.

>>6809395
>Not pessimist Catholic existentialism
Platonism is second to only one belief system

>>6809418
It's time to fuck off and come back when you've read Zizek. Why are you even posting here?

>>6809429
>any form of Christian
>pessimistic

doingitwrong.png

>>6809373
Chomsky donates millions of dollars every year to help unions. How is that "doing nothing?"

>>6809442
meaning he's no different than bill gates.

charity =/= solidarity

>>6809432

Zizek is a shitty meme, and his philosophy is inherently circular and therfore useless. Plato, Socrates, and Stoics ran circles around "this is ideology" millennia before Slavoj started dicking around.

Furthermore, Zizek is not an economist, and he has no demonstrated understanding of the actual mathematical systems which determine the way capital flows and shapes the world.

If you're looking to philosophy to fix inequality and worker's rights, you've gone the wrong way.

>>6809429

Deterministic Gnosticism is the Form of the Good

>>6809442
Maybe he should hand over his house on the Charles River to Boston's homeless.

Hell, Boston's only infoshop was gentrified out of Southie. He could have offered them a place to relocate.

>>6807285
>Why do I care how much bread he keeps in the Caribbean or wherever? He's an intellectual and selling books is how he makes a posh living. Nothing about the status of his bank account keeps me from using his research.
Sure, no one said you can't use it. The real issue here is Chomsky's blatant hypocrisy, which is what OP is trying to communicate. If Chomsky wanted to be moral, he would advocate living as capital-free as possible. Give up your worldly pleasures so your mind becomes radicalized. After all, the working class in the West is arguably highly de-radicalized due to all the indulgences it has. Who wants to expropriate the means of production when wage slavery gives you enough for an iPhone?

>My wages are funded by my boss's capital, but that doesn't make me a capitalist, you know?
Your wages are your own labor, idiot. Your boss's capital comes from the exploitation of you and your coworkers.

>I'm pretty sure I can work a job while planning to hang my boss. You have to be working to organize your work-place, buddy.
Yeah, good luck getting most American workers to "organize". You couldn't even get most of the American working class to join OWS.

>>6809218
ugh tbh

You're both lazy hypocrites who want to enjoy the benefits of capitalism while complaining the entire time

#tbh

>>6807478
Chomsky hasn't been an anarchist since he was BTFO by Foucault. Afterwards, he barely spoke of his utopian anarchist vision out of the humiliation he received by dear Saint Michel.

>>6809373
>OK then, so how is chomsky any different than, say, the frankfurt school boys who were just pretentiously whining about how much capitalism has corrupted western culture?
The funny thing is, Frankfurt School never professed to be revolutionaries. Quite the opposite, actually. Chomsky, OTOH, does.

>>6809642
I need sources on this. I want to read/watch this.

>A story: When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo. I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls—sweet and giggly—spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room. They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried fish to go with their rice.
>
>They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”
>
>So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?
>
>It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

>>6810099
>This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.
>
>These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”
>
>Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”
>
>The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

>>6809586
>If Chomsky wanted to be moral, he would advocate living as capital-free as possible. Give up your worldly pleasures so your mind becomes radicalized.
so give up your computer then.
>After all, the working class in the West is arguably highly de-radicalized due to all the indulgences it has. Who wants to expropriate the means of production when wage slavery gives you enough for an iPhone?
The american working class hates unions because they've been lead to believe unions are anti-freedom and steal from them. Repression against unions by the ruling class has been going on for centuries. If we lived in a union culture like France the labor movement would look very different.

>Yeah, good luck getting most American workers to "organize". You couldn't even get most of the American working class to join OWS.
OWS wasn't a labor movement. It was a movement lead by middle class college students.

>>6810105
>The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.
>
>In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/climate-change-is-a-crisis-we-can-only-solve-together/

>>6810070
It's a youtube debate.

Just as the debate begins, Foucault declares, "actually, I don't think my English is good enough for this debate, so from now I'm I'm only going to speak in French." Chomsky then has no idea what Foucault is saying and has to rely on a very brief and crude paraphrasing, while sneaky Foucault understands everything Chomsky is saying.

>>6810116
That sounds silly. Here Chomsky is in 2015 advocating economic and workplace democracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfaFriFAz1k

>>6810099
>>6810105
>>6810112
Lifestyle politics is indeed a shit tactic. Klein's story, however, really does absolutely nothing to vindicate Chomsky's hypocrisy. In some ways, integrating into consumer society pacifies the would-be revolutionary class, and we're already seeing this in the West as it is. Western workers are not going to organize and conduct a mass anarcho-syndicalist revolution because they have no incentive. They do not "feel" exploited the way the workers Klein mentioned do. They are content with their iPhones, coffee, Nike shoes, and trips to the Bahamas. The "consumerist" workers in Klein's memoir have more to gain than to lose, and are hardly bogged down by consumer society the way Westerners have become.

I'm not a Maoist-Third Worldist, but I strongly agree that at this point there is no revolutionary class in the West. At this point, I'm willing to go full Laclau and agree that the only thing those of us on the far-left can do to stir the pot is take advantage of the contentions that exist in society in hopes that a revolutionary class will come together from it.

>>6810106
>The american working class hates unions because they've been lead to believe unions are anti-freedom and steal from them. Repression against unions by the ruling class has been going on for centuries. If we lived in a union culture like France the labor movement would look very different.
Guess what? I've lived in France and in Italy (both huge bastions of "union culture"). And in both countries unions are heavily government-controlled. IWW doesn't exist in Europe. The CNT in Spain are now sellouts like the rest of them.

Look, the lack of a labor movement isn't reducible to propaganda from Fox News. There's a whole set of institutions in society that fuck with you every day. Workers do not "snap out of it" as soon as you feed them Chomsky's ramblings about why we need horizontal workplaces. A married father of three with a 401k isn't going to give all of that up for an idealistic anarchist utopia that may never come.

>>6809079
>>6809332
>>6809356
>>6809373
>>6809587

Again and again, I cannot take any of you guys say seriously if you keep,

1. Applying the term "liberal" to any left idea/author. Its like a biologist keep calling cows "Mus" in an adult conversation or a physicist calling atoms "the little small things". You sound literally THAT stupid, not even kidding

2. Implying that someone's work on capitalism is invalid because this one is living a wealthy life inside capitalism. The current system is as much about wealthy as it is about the above mentionned sweatshop slaves, commodities wars, etc. Its all connected and dependent. Who else would be able to write a crític on capitalism if not someone from the wealthy class?

>>6810139
I gave plenty of reasons to reject Chomsky's shitty political views without entirely resorting to ad homs. So far, no one here has proven his political leanings to be either 1. workable or 2. useful given the current situation the West is in.

There are plenty of better critiques of capitalism besides Chomsky. And most academics are not wealthy. My ex-bf is an adjunct at a major university and he barely gets paid enough.

>>6810099
>>6810105
>>6810112
In summary: We are led to believe that what we do as individuals matter a whole lot. But actually it doesn't matter that much. What really matters is what we do together. So you can eat at McDonald's and still be against exploitation. By withholding those $20 from McDonald's you are not making a difference. (Actually, the same people who own McDonald's also own A LOT of other (food production) businesses, so those $20 will eventually end up in their hands anyway.) But by participating actively in organisations against exploitation you CAN make a difference. For instance, if you participate in those demonstrations to get McDonald's employees unionised.

I think we can apply the same idea to Chomsky and his academic criticisms. As an individual he participates in capital accumulation, which we consider bad (like giving $20 to McDonald's). But together with other people he does a whole lot (like argue the case for unionisation as the brilliant academic that he is).

>>6810155
>(like argue the case for unionisation as the brilliant academic that he is).
Except that radical unionism is an outdated strategy at this point for the West. Perhaps it could work in a place like Indonesia, but even then it has its faults (i.e. it completely ignores political struggle).

Radical unions barely exist in the West anymore. The IWW in my area is more like a historical society than an actual radical organization.

>>6806732
He's not a communist
He is at a university cause that's his job, where has chomsky said people should not do work they find rewarding?
As for the pay, where has chomsky said people have to go live in a mountain cabin?

You're judging chomsky by your own arbitrarily defined standards, not by anything he has said or done

>>6810164
In the case of fast-food workers in USA, I think unionisation can work. But we will have to wait and see.

But I agree, unions are losing terrain fast.

>>6807019
Cause they needed computers, and it was all very public and known

>>6810173
>In the case of fast-food workers in USA, I think unionisation can work
Why?

>>6807079
Why can't you? That's just denying reality.

>>6810178
Well, ideology is a big issue, and is often overlooked.

People who are content with working within the capitalist system tend to lose their desire to destroy it, unless they're highly ideologically driven, which is not the case for most people.

For example, you're anti-capitalist once you're in college. You graduate and have a pile of student debt. So, you agree to take a job at a corporation. You start off small but gradually work up the corporate ladder. At a certain point you start thinking: "hey, this isn't so bad!" and start to think twice about your anti-capitalist stance.

This may not be the case for everyone, but it is certainly the case for quite a few. My mother was a Marxist all throughout her youth until this exact scenario happened to her.

>>6807650
>Liberals left of center

Liberals are not fucking left wing by any stretch of the imagination. As a Left-Winger who debates Liberals all the fucking time, it doesn't take much to get your ordinary Liberal to start spouting shit that wouldn't be out of place at a Tea Party Rally.

Liberals are the intellectual vanguard of Capitalism, their slimy, globalized, "progressive" ideology always generally results in more people getting exploited by Capital.

>"Oh the third world is sexist for not allowing women in work places and having to stay at home and look after the family!, Women should be allowed to work because it gives them independent freedom!"

Which in reality is

>"We need small hands for sweat shops, fuck the kids, they can beg and help the family, mother needs to be doing 18 hour days for $1"

As the saying goes, "Liberals are center-left in the good times and far-right when it effects them personally"

Fuck Liberals. bourgeois motherfuckers.

>>6810139
Also everyone seems to be ignoring Marx was from a rich intellectual family and fucking Engels was a company owner who owned many factories.

>>6810176
Let me just be clear, I am not from the USA and I don't know the details. I only know of this struggle through superficial news articles. It is my impression that a lot of fast food workers have had enough. The many demonstrations that they have held tell me that they have been forced into a (economic) corner and they are willing to push back. This gives me hope that they will succeed.

Now, I don't know the legal framework surrounding unions in the USA. I sometimes hear terrible stories about union busting in the USA, so it is something that gives me cause for concern. If the fast food workers succeed it might be tough to hold onto the union. But if they manage, I think it can improve their situation.

In my country unionisation does improve wages and work conditions. When a business signs an agreement with a union it sticks. We have strong laws in place for this and the laws are enforced without hesitation.

>>6810214
No one denies that there are instances where privileged individuals can become radicalized. However, this doesn't happen on a large scale.

And after all, if we are all radical leftists, do we even WANT it to happen? A "socialism" lead and run by the white middle class would arguably be quite exclusionary, no?

>>6810216
There is definitely a possibility that fast food workers could successfully unionize, but it won't be due to the IWW or any Chomsky fanboys/fangirls. Of course, Chomsky will probably give his seal of approval from his ivory tower but that means little when you're scraping by.

>>6810220
Ah, yes. The example with McDonald's and unions is actually not a good example. I just wanted to refer to something concrete in my post and I couldn't come up with anything else. (I just happened to think of something that I heard on the radio yesterday. One of our socialist members of parliament was criticized for going to McDonald's. So I just tumbled on from there.)

And it fit with
>>6809442
>Chomsky donates millions of dollars every year to help unions.

But I will have to take that anon's word for it. Personally, I know very little about Chomsky. I would assume that his important academic contributions are in the area of media criticism (and not in the area of unionisation).

>>6810240
Even if Chomsky does donate "millions to unions" it's really no different than Bill Gates donating millions to vaccinate kids in Africa. The hierarchical relationship of rich ---> poor remains the same, and could be interpreted as a form of white saviorism.

>>6810243
If he sheds his wealth he is slapped with "saviorism" and if he retains his wealth he is considered a bourgeois turn-coat. How can Chomsky come out on top in this, then?

>>6810250
Why does Chomsky need to come out on top? Do worker movements depend on him? No. His ideology isn't even accepted by most radicals after they grow out of "the phase".

>>6808210
>he accuses his opponent of not understanding the concept he's presenting, therefore ad hominem

>>6807088
Please look up what "support" means you fucking subhuman. If he was GIVING hitler money then youd be right. And before you go there taking free money doesnt necessarily mean its a kickback if your not helping their agenda in return

>>6810135
>sympathizing with MTW

>>6810139
I cracked up at this.

But yeah there is no point talking to most Americans about politics because their political discourse is so screwed up.

>>6806492
>maybe if rich people gave donated more of their money capitalism would be over
read you Marx, noob.

>>6810291
I don't like them, but I see where they're coming from. At this point, the average Western worker has become so immersed in capitalist ideology that there's no point in trying to educate them. What does it lead to? Nothing.

Union membership in the US was at an all-time high during the 1950s and much of it was only to the benefit of middle-class white people. Same thing with the welfare state: people forget that the post-war era was a time where you saw a mini social democracy emerge in the US where the gov. would subsidize your house in certain neighborhoods, albeit the vast majority of those neighborhoods would not sell to PoC.

>>6810296
No one is saying Chomsky should donate money. Even if he does, it doesn't advance anything.

Intellectuals absolutely have their place in revolutionary activity, but Chomsky's ideas are not revolutionary. No one on the far-left is against workers taking the means of production. The real questions that need to be answered are: 1. how do we get there? and 2. how do we deal with our opponents?

>>6810258
>Why does Chomsky need to come out on top?
Of course he does not have to come out on top. What I mean is that people seem to deride the ideas of Chomsky due to his wealth. The way that I see it he has two choices (either give his money away as charity or retain it) and both choices lead some people to deride his ideas. But his ideas can still be worthwhile even if he has money or if he gives money away to charity. You can still have radical ideas even if you are able to accumulate wealth. So I would say, let's not judge his ideas based on what he does with his wealth.

Actually there is a third option. He can use his money to accumulate even more wealth and he can spend it to actively support the interests of capital. If somebody does this, we should be very critical towards their ideas. But being inherently sceptical of somebody who accumulates wealth is silly in my opinion. It somehow reminds me of purism, fanaticism, and fundamentalism.

>Do worker movements depend on him?
Changes require analysis, critique, and action. Chomsky has showed that he is capable of providing analysis and critique that we can benefit from. Chomsky himself isn't essential but the kind of work that he does is, in my opinion, a necessity for change to occur.

>>6807786
Maybe because you dont get out much and pay too much attention to /pol/ & cherrypicked articles from shitty websites no one cares about like Salon?

>>6810312
> But being inherently sceptical of somebody who accumulates wealth is silly in my opinion.
Well, he does own more than one home. He could have handed over his house on the Charles to the LPC infoshop when they were kicked out of the South End back in 2010.

>Changes require analysis, critique, and action. Chomsky has showed that he is capable of providing analysis and critique that we can benefit from. Chomsky himself isn't essential but the kind of work that he does is, in my opinion, a necessity for change to occur.
Like I just said, there are plenty of critiques and analyses of capitalism beyond Chomsky. What makes Chomsky's critiques and analyses better than, say, David Harvey's or Andrew Kliman's?

Anarchist critiques of capitalism are actually quite conservative TBH. From what I've seen, the vast majority of their critiques are heavily moralistic and are based on a very Classical Liberal idea of "freedom" (even if they are quite critical of CLs).

Chomsky critiques US imperialism. So do plenty of other far-left intellectuals. Chomsky's work is usually neglected once radicals and radical organizations move on.

>>6810334
I wanted to add, from my own experience I've found that anarcho-syndicalists (at least in the US) have a love-hate relationship with lifestyle politics. While they are very critical of dropping out for the same reasons Chomsky is (i.e. "Marx studied in the British Museum") much of what they do revolves around petty changes to lifestyle in order to build consciousness of some sort. The anarchists in my area are almost entirely vegan or vegetarian and do not allow meat at their zinefests. Their excuse is, they want people to "think" about animal rights, and feel that they need to change a meat-centered culture. Hell, much of the "we need to change the culture" revolves around lifestyle politics.

Even OWS was, in a sense, closer to Peter Lamborn Wilson's ideas than Chomsky's. I don't think I have ever read or heard of Chomsky calling for the creation of liberated zones. Of course, that idea is very Deleuzian, so...

>>6810334
Analyses are different. I am not concerned with which are 'better' than others. I read many different things and I use what I can from them.

I haven't read anything major by Chomsky.

>>6810351
Entirely strawman. Having privilege doesn't make you inherently reactionary. Giving up your privilege doesn't work. You might as well tell everyone to live in the woods.

>>6810367
Sure. Although, you do come off as very defensive of Chomsky for whatever reason. I trust you, though.

>>6810409
>Having privilege doesn't make you inherently reactionary.
And no one said it did. There are plenty of cases in history where a select few of colonizers went to fight alongside the colonized (Algeria, for example) but they were only a select few.

There are real problems with privilege that go beyond the usual SJW/liberal critiques. For one, privilege is essentially a blinder that causes you not to see certain elements of everyday life. That's why people like PLW (yes, I know he's a pedo; don't judge me) willingly live without modern luxuries even when they can afford to: living in that way gives them the knowledge of those points of life that would have otherwise been hidden from them.

I'm no fan of lifestyle politics but I do see a use for them if they're part of a larger political movement or program. After all, the BDS Movement (which Chomsky frequently criticizes, surprise surprise) is arguably a lifestylist movement because it relies entirely on conscious consumerism. Buying fair trade olive oil made by a Palestinian co-op in Bethlehem over Israeli olive oil made on a kibbutz isn't going to help anyone resist anything.

>>6810420
>living in that way gives them the knowledge of those points of life that would have otherwise been hidden from them.
But you can also use your privilege to gain access to knowledge that the poor don't have.

>fter all, the BDS Movement (which Chomsky frequently criticizes, surprise surprise) is arguably a lifestylist movement because it relies entirely on conscious consumerism.
The Palestinians literally told the world to boycott Israel. This isn't about lifestyle politics but respecting an oppressed people's wishes. Chomsky also supports BDS just not the movement.

>>6810436
>But you can also use your privilege to gain access to knowledge that the poor don't have.
As in? Libraries and bookstores are open to most people. If you're talking about booksmarts, you're not talking about knowledge that one needs to be privileged in order to obtain.

Besides, knowledge isn't limited to books. Most of what we understand about oppression comes from our everyday lives, hence why the working class in the US is so anti-socialist; they don't "feel" exploited by their bosses and are perfectly able to afford consumer goods without taking control of their workplaces, so they don't bother to. As far as knowledge is concerned, I doubt most college professors (Chomsky included) know how to squat a fucking abandoned building or can truly sympathize with those below them.

>>6806732
Zizek's reasoning on this: https://youtu.be/mGC3uJadXh0?t=4m43s

>>6810436
>Chomsky also supports BDS just not the movement.
No, he said many times that he thinks BDS is just the ramblings of white liberals who like screaming: "Destroy Israel!" and should instead just go along with international law. I do agree with him that the major arguments for BDS are nothing but moralist claptrap though. Radicals have no reason to think that someone is necessarily strategic just because they are/feel oppressed.

>>6810436
>The Palestinians literally told the world to boycott Israel.
no a group calling themselves "the palestinian people" told the world to boycott.

the actual palestinian people can't even get a boycott of settlement products going.

>>6810444
Watching this makes me sad. Listen to the people cheer "Yeah, lets do something" but then straight after they will stay circlejerking in their little ivory tower, stage some feel good protests nobody cares about or watches and circlejerk on /lit/, Libcom or /r/socialism.

Something I've noticed a lot recently is how the reactionary right dominates the discourse essentially everywhere, 4chan is filled with reactionary-far right fascists and Ancaps, Reddit is filled with reactionary far right and Libertarians, I go look at comments on News sites and they are filled to the brim with right wingers and right wing Liberals who think they are Socialist because they support some basic Welfare.

We live in an age where the left in the first world not only doesn't exist physically, it doesn't exist mentally as well, the furthest "left" the discourse goes in the media these days is your identity politics Keynesian Liberal, the thing is, I know there are leftists out there, many Socialist sites and Groups out there have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of subscribers and such (and millions if you accept Venus project stuff to be just be a new age version of Anarcho-Communism), but I rarely if ever see left wing people posting or engaging outside those groups.

Why is the left so content with allowing the reactionary right to control the narrative and be the only ones engaging the narrative? It's fucking annoying as shit going into debates online and getting dogpiled because no "comrades" are there to back you up, instead circlejerking over something in their own ivory tower communities.

>>6810666
>>>>/leftypol/
>>>/lit/

>>6810666

ever been on tumblr/twitter? tons of hip millenial communism

>>6810854
Liberals, all of them

>>6810854

Not a tumblr regular, but one I visited reminded me of 4chan more than anything else.

>>6810854
"hip millenial communism" is liberalism though

>>6810139
That's it boy, you can't write a book criticizing capitalism, leave that to us rich people.

Worker Co-ops are the way of the future

>>6810666
The problem is, Satan, that the reactionary "right," as you call it, is largely right. Leftism is dead as dead, and I called myself a marxist throughout university until I actually started taking an interest in politics and history. In fact, the whole right-left ideal is a false paradigm. I love coming here from time to time for the inspiration, but it stinks of degeneracy tbh.

>>6810942
Zizek for example. Fifteen years ago he would've been like a hero to me. But now I can't even understand what the fuck he's talking about, he seems so detached from and his frames of reference bear no relation to reality. It's repellent. And Chomsky is as bluepilled as they come, but then he has the excuse of being a jew.

>>6806492

Can we talk about literature on a literature board?