Noam Chomsky

 

Noam Chomsky

It's sad to hear that Noam Chomsky, 96, has now lost the ability to write and speak. He's best known for his political writings and political opinions. I think he described himself as an anarchist or to be more precise, an adherent of revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism, which advocated workers control and self-managed industry in a non-governmental society run by the working-class.

 Professionally, his academic background is in linguistics and not politics. Chomsky has written a great deal about manufacturing consent and how those that govern us, and the media, set the agenda and the parameters for political discourse. Yet they never managed to shut him up and he was considered one of the most influential people on the planet. He also managed to retain his job at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in spite of his controversial views that many saw as anti- American. Sadly, it's old age that has managed to silence Noam Chomsky and not the U.S. government.

 As the Marxist historian, E.P. Thompson, wrote in his book 'The Making of the English Working Class', "No ideology is wholly absorbed by its adherents: it breaks down in practice in a thousand ways under criticism of impulse and of experience." Not all of us are gullible and inclined to believe what we're told. The big shots in their ivory towers may say one thing but our everyday experiences and lives tell us something very different.