I find Chomsky a very interesting and stimulating read. I’m glad he’s around to provide his perspective, and I shall make sure I read more of him in future (I have Deterring Democracy and Manufacturing Consent on my shelves, which are next in line). I think he’s particularly good at exhuming otherwise ignored malefactions by the US Government – thinking of Central America in particular, but it does go more widely. (So as someone who doesn’t like state power in general, he’s good at providing ammunition for the dispelling of some illusions.) I think he’s particularly good on media bias, and with some quibbles (some of which he accepted in UP) I think his “Propaganda model” is basically right.

However I think that he is significantly wrong about capitalism. In particular I think his analysis is a) incoherent and naïve and b) parochial to the US.

a. The incoherence/naivete shows itself in his attribution of motives to businesses. On p391 of my copy he describes the “institutional necessity” that corporations work under as “to the extent that you have a competitive system based on private control over resources, you are forced to maximise short term gain”; on p394, as part of an analysis of how scientific research is corrupted by business patronage, he says “big corporations understand that if they want to keep making profits five years from now, there’d better be some science funded today”. Both of those can’t be true. Now he’s being colloquial in the book, which makes it more readable, but this was just one instance of a prevalent confusion in his perspective, ie that businessmen are rapacious short-term capitalists – except for when they’re rapacious long-term capitalists. I just find his comments on business processes weak, as compared to his foreign policy analysis.

b. More specifically I think that his criticisms have most force when applied to an Anglo-Saxon publicly listed company. I don’t think that they’re applicable to European companies/ social models, and they’re definitely not applicable to Asian companies. The cheibatsu/keiretsu model, for example, is geared around the maintenance or increase of long term market share. That’s very different to the maximisation of the bottom line.

Part of the underlying disagreement I have with his analysis rests upon his anthropology. A strongly left-wing analysis often minimises the role of individual choice, and in particular, it has the logical consequence of being forced to argue that most people (are forced to) choose the wrong things – whereas the anointed are free from such malign influences. I think Chomsky is guilty of this, and this is one of the key progressive/conservative debates. One of the most important disagreements flows from this: I think that he systematically underestimates the importance of individual choice and leadership. So he says “Nobody does anything on their own”, and to the extent that he is describing the importance of social organisation he is
right. But I think there is a necessary role for spokesmen who can articulate a vision which inspires the movement as a whole, and that no amount of organisation can make up for the lack of such a leader. (I don’t think I’m arguing for a Fuhrerprinzip here, just that “without a vision the people perish”).

So: worth reading, but best consumed with added salt.