KEEPING
THE RABBLE IN LINE –
NOAM CHOMSKY
By denouncing their practises, methods and tactics, Noam Chomsky may
have blotted his copy book with some of our black-clad brethren in
Antifa but does that mean in return his whole canon should now be
dismissed? Of course not. Chomsky's now in his nineties and though he
may still be as sharp as a needle when compared to most, at his age
we can forgive him for a few lapses in judgement because after all –
he's earned it. So yes, Chomsky's still worth reading if only for
food for thought and that's something he's always been a good
provider of.
Keeping The Rabble In Line is another one of those books
published by AK Press composed of interviews with Chomsky by writer
and broadcaster David Barsamian. The first thing to consider about it
is the title. Who exactly is the rabble and why is it important to
keep them in line? Well, the rabble is me and you, basically. It's
the general population, the general public, or as writer and
political commentator Walter Lippmann put it, the “ignorant and
meddlesome outsiders”.
According to Chomsky, any holders of concentrated power, and that
includes corporations of course, do not want any external constraints
on their capacity to make decisions and act freely, so to these ends
they want the general public to be mere spectators, not participants.
Democracy acts simply as a way of legitimizing the power held by
those whom it benefits most, which means in elections it's typically
representatives of dominant sectors who stand and their actions on
being elected serve only to maintain the status quo.
Democracy and casting a vote every few years maintains the illusion
that concentrated power and authority can be controlled through the
ballot box but as the old anarchist maxim says: 'Whoever you vote
for, government wins' – and it's true. It's a very simple truth.
That's not to say liberal democracy and voting is entirely
ineffectual because it does at least give the general population the
opportunity to choose their prison guards and that in itself counts
for something. At the end of the day, however, they're still prison
guards. What would you rather have: A racist, sexist, bullying leader
or representative who hates you (in either business or government) or
a benign leader who is anti-racist, anti-sexist who tells you they
love and care for you? It's the good cop bad cop scenario but at the
end of the day they're still both cops.
As Chomsky explains, it's possible that there could one day be a
colour-free society and that the glass ceiling for women is removed
but this wouldn't actually change the political economy at all. For
this reason you often find the business sector quite happy to support
efforts to overcome racism and sexism because they know that these
things don't matter much. Some white male privilege might be lost but
that's not all that important in the scheme of things. On the other
hand, basic changes in the core institutions would be bitterly
resisted, that's if they ever even became thinkable.
So if the general public is the rabble, then who are the holders of
concentrated power? Well, though they're definable it's no easy task
as their faces and names keep changing. Chomsky refers to them as the
'ruling elite' though that term's been criticised for conferring too
much dignity upon them. Interestingly, he shies away from using the
word 'class' as in 'ruling class' due to its various associations. As
he explains: 'As soon as you say the word 'class', everybody falls
down dead. There's some Marxist raving again.' Or nowadays some
Right-wing zealot raving.
Alternatively, Chomsky suggests they can be referred to as 'the
masters' who in the words of economist and philosopher Adam Smith
follow their own 'vile maxim', namely 'all for ourselves
and nothing for other people.' Or at best, crumbs from the table
for other people, I would say. Again, it's a very simple truth.
At one point in Keeping The Rabble In Line, Chomsky discusses Ghandi
and questions whether non-violence should be an absolute principle?
Apparently in 1938 Ghandi suggested that German Jews ought to commit
collective suicide so as to arouse the world and the German people to
Hitler's violence. Chomsky emphasises that what Ghandi was suggesting
was a tactical proposal, not a principled one but at the same time
finds it somewhat grotesque. What Ghandi should have been
emphasizing, Chomsky says, is for the world to do something to
prevent the Jews from being massacred:
'Powerless people who are being led to slaughter can't do
anything. Therefore it's up to others to do something for them. To
give them advice on how they should be slaughtered is not very
uplifting, to put it mildly. You can say the same about other things
all the time.'
And indeed you can. Just name your poison. But before you go chasing
rabbits and liaising with hookah-smoking caterpillars, just make
sure you're not going off on some crazy wild goose chase which is
going to involve you in extremely detailed microanalysis and
discussions of things that don't matter. Conspiracy theories, in
other words.
'If it's too hard to deal with real problems, there are a lot of
ways to avoid doing so. One of them is to go off on wild goose chases
that don't matter. Another is to get involved in academic cults that
are very divorced from any reality and that provide a defense against
dealing with the world as it actually is.' And this, of course,
can mean anything from the assassination of JFK, the destruction of
the Twin Towers on 9/11, to the question of how modern day
linguistics provide a new paradigm for discourse about international
affairs that will supplant the post-structuralist text.... For
example.
In amongst such food for thought as provided by Chomsky you're going
to find the odd fly in the soup and the odd bite that's unappetizing
(such as when he states that 'Europe is an extremely racist place'
compared to America) but that's only to be expected. Overall, Keeping
The Rabble In Line is a good, four-square meal and Noam Chomsky is a
very, very good cook and at the end of the day, dining out with him
makes a pleasant and nourishing change from McDonalds. And again,
that's a very simple truth.
John Serpico
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