I've also appreciated Chomsky's tendency to ignore another symptom of decadence: postmodern feminism, queer theory, gender theory, all the discussion of sexuality and bodies and so on that proliferates among liberal and leftist academics and activists. Practically the only time he ever acknowledges feminism is when describing progress that has been made since the 1960s. And he's right, of course: the progress that has been made in women's rights and sexual equality, as in gay rights, in the last two generations is of immense importance, and has had a civilizing effect on the culture. Moreover, this sort of activism remains urgent, as states roll back abortion rights, a conservative majority exists on the Supreme Court, the Trump administration tries to make it more difficult for sexual assault survivors to speak out, etc. Feminism will always be of great moral significance, because there will always be room for improvement in relations between the sexes.
But the specifically postmodernist aspects of contemporary feminism are of far less moral importance than the general goal to empower women. In fact, there's an enormous amount of intellectual confusion, shallow thinking, self-deception, and hypocrisy among feminists. I've discussed the matter here, and won't delve into it now. Suffice it to say that, for most feminists, the idealistic mantra "Social constructions!" substitutes for thought, and for open-minded perusal of the relevant scientific and psychological literature--not all of which (to say the least) supports favored politically correct dogmas. The radical empiricism of postmodern feminism, according to which the minds of males and females are a blank slate at birth onto which social expectations are written--such that genes, hormones, brain structures and such make nocontribution to the differences in behavior and psychology between men and women--is extremely primitive and scientifically illiterate.
But it's an example of a very common and unfortunate human tendency: the tendency to believe something not on the basis of evidence but simply because one wants to believe it. Most people evidently are prone to thinking on the level of "I like" and "I don't like," not "The evidence suggests-- They think according to value-judgments, not disinterested investigation of evidence. This explains how religious belief can be so widespread despite being irrational and absurd: people want to believe in God, so they do. This phenomenon is such a "fundamental dishonesty and fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity," to quote Bertrand Russell, that I find it hard to understand. But it's present everywhere, among feminists, conservatives, liberals ("Obama was a great and moral president!"--despite his drone terrorism campaign, aggressive deportation of immigrants, refusal to prosecute bankers, slavish support of Israel, refusal to bail out homeowners after the 2008 crash, support for the 2009 military coup in Honduras, relatively meager actions on climate change, catastrophic intervention in Libya, support for dictators all over the world, and generally his abject subservience to the oligarchy that runs the U.S.), free-market fundamentalists, Leninists, and so forth.
Regarding Leninism, for instance, Chomsky is right to criticize both the theory and the practice (before, during, and after the Russian Revolution). Recent scholarship, such as that of Christopher Read and Orlando Figes, validates the old criticisms of Lenin by anarchists, left-Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg, and Chomsky himself, in showing how Lenin ended the experiments with workers' control of factories in 1917 and established dictatorial control over the state and society. One can argue that he had to, given the conditions that prevailed; but it's striking that his undemocratic, semi-Blanquist practice was wholly consistent with his earlier ideas, his vanguardism and elitism. But even apart from this, there is something at least prima facie odd in still worshiping and looking for profound lessons from a figure, or figures, who dealt with conditions that could hardly be more different from the U.S. in the twenty-first century. What does Russia in 1917 (and earlier, when Lenin was formulating his ideas) have in common with the U.S. in 2018? Why not stop obsessing over how Lenin seized power in a shattered late-feudal, early-capitalist country, or what his strategies were to seize power in such a country, and instead focus on conditions and problems that confront us now?
One other point about feminists, and many other young leftists today: conservatives' criticisms of their totalitarian tendencies are not wholly off the mark. Free speech is, after all, an important value, however much feminists and others might not want to hear things that hurt their feelings. To give a trivial personal example: I was once invited to give a talk on worker cooperatives at a university, but the invitation was rescinded after some students came across the page on feminism I linked to above. They were offended, you see, by what they had read. I found the incident more amusing than anything, but it was a little disconcerting to have it vividly confirmed to me that even the sorts of obvious truths and mild provocations they had read are considered beyond the pale, so much so that it's necessary to cancel a talk on a completely unrelated subject. Nothing less than absolute uniformity of thought is permitted.
Such censorship, incidentally, has an ironic similarity to the functioning of hierarchical institutions. In institutions, at least, one can argue there's some necessity to conform fairly rigidly; otherwise the institution might break down. But leftists should be more careful about persecuting people, or refusing to listen to them, just because they don't subscribe wholeheartedly to the party line.
Again, though, Chomsky's attitude is right: however stupid and immoral the totalitarian intolerance of young leftists might be--and also self-defeating, because it risks alienating people who basically share their values and want to fight for a better society--the threat to free speech posed by such people is so minuscule compared to the colossal suppression of truth and free speech by government and the corporate media that it makes no sense to focus on the silly young leftists. Unless, of course, you're as unprincipled as, say, Nicholas Kristof.
Moreover, Chomsky's general reluctance to criticize the left, especially as compared with the fierce criticisms he levels against dominant groups, is precisely right. "The most important word in the language of the working class is 'solidarity,'" Harry Bridges said. Privately, yes, one should criticize the actions or beliefs of fellow leftists if that might have a constructive effect. But one should be wary of making severe public criticisms, since that might serve only to foment resentment and thereby fragment and undermine the left. No living leftist better exemplifies solidarity than Chomsky. (On this point, he is far superior to the sectarian Marx.)
To sum up, Chomsky has been able to avoid all the decadence that has afflicted intellectual and cultural life for well over a hundred years. I have yet to come across instances in his writings and talks of sloppy thinking, intellectual dishonesty, a lack of commitment to principle, or the groupthink and status-consciousness that determine how virtually all "intellectuals" (and, in fact, nearly all people) think, write, and act. How common it is for people to take something seriously just because it's taken seriously by others! Or to act in a certain way only because others do, and condemn those who act or think differently. Instead, one should step outside one's own little subjectivity, one's personal feelings and impulses, and evaluate every thought and act in the light of cold reason and warm compassion.
nother unusual quality of this ÃÅ"bermensch I'm over-praising is that he doesn't waste words. His manner of speaking and writing is notably pithy and economical--which sounds odd, since he's famously long-winded. He talks and talks, and could probably talk for days, until he collapsed from inanition, just following a train of thought where it led him. In general, though, every word seems necessary, every sentence furthers the argument or usefully illustrates it with examples. This economy of expression is, to put it mildly, unusual among intellectuals. As among everyone else. People love to hear themselves talk, and they'll frequently talk for the sake of talking. It's a phenomenon readily observable during most kinds of "meetings" (of activists, for example), academic seminars, and question-and-answer sessions during talks (in which audience members asking their questions frequently expatiate unnecessarily, and often incoherently, on all manner of topics, until the moderator has to interrupt them).
Again, I'm led back to the theme of decadence, and of particularity vs. generality. People are immersed in themselves: when talking at great length unnecessarily, they're being self-indulgent, unempathetic, undisciplined, and just plain stupid. (Stupidity is utterly immersed in itself, whereas intelligence incorporates others. Particularity vs. generality.) In communicating, one should try to stick to the point. Even more importantly, one should have a point.
Chomsky's practice in this respect holds some lessons for academics. He doesn't describe for the sake of describing, recounting things that happened just because it's interesting to tell stories or to probe the experiences of people from certain analytical perspectives (the perspectives of gender, race, sexuality, or whatnot). While there is value in doing so, in the manner of social historians for example, he prefers to take a more scientific approach to the study of society. As he says in this interview (near the end), if your goal is to explain, rather than just to describe, you have to apply general principles to particular phenomena and try to explain the latter in terms of the former. You don't simply wade around in the particularity and remain on that level; and you certainly don't celebrate the particular for its own sake, as postmodern scholarship--which rejects general principles like class conflict as either oversimplifications or of no special priority--often does. The whole point of science is to simplify, to explain the chaotic mess of reality in terms of simple principles like Boyle's Law or Newton's laws of motion. You abstract from complicating factors and isolate dominant forces; then you try to account for unexplained factors by using secondary principles, and so on. Throughout, the point is to test the general idea, not to say, in effect, "Reality is incredibly complex, but here are various ways of describing it and interpreting it (using gender, race, sexuality, class, individual psychology, etc.)."
Chomsky isn't wrong when he says--while admitting that the picture he's presenting is overdrawn--"Humanistic scholarship"says every fact is precious; you put it alongside every other fact. That's a sure way to guarantee you'll never understand anything. If you tried to do that in the sciences, you wouldn't even reach the level of Babylonian astronomy."
As I've explained in this essay, in the case of society, the dominant principle has to be class conflict. Or historical materialism more generally. Of course, society is different from nature: it's not deterministic. So the "science" is of a different character than physics, and the explanatory principles are of a different character than Newton's laws of motion. Still, the people who criticize Chomsky or Howard Zinn or Marx for being reductivist, oversimplifying, partisan, etc. are wide of the mark. The truth is that it's the establishment intellectuals who are being far less scientific than the "partisan" leftists, because the latter recognize how science, or understanding, works. It isn't "neutral." It is grounded in"reductivist" principles.
A new book by the respected liberal historian Jill Lepore serves to illustrate the point. These Truths: A History of the United States has received the usual acclaim that establishment writers get, and in many ways it is an impressive achievement. But not as providing a framework of explanation for U.S. history. Insofar as the narrative is guided by general ideas at all, they're the wrong ideas. "The United States rests on a dedication to equality, which is chiefly a moral idea, rooted in Christianity, but it rests, too, on a dedication to inquiry, fearless and unflinching." "The American experiment rests on three political ideas"political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people." It's the tiresomely conventional liberal idealism, which, incidentally, is grounded in value-judgments just as much as Zinn's People's History of the United States is. Lepore has given the usual criticisms of Zinn, that he simply reverses old value-judgments about the gloriousness of America, a reversal that, analytically, "isn't an advance; it's more of the same, only upside-down." She fails to see that her own history is just a more subtle return to the narrative about how great and unique "the American experiment" is. She acknowledges that lots of bad things have happened in U.S. history, but then immediately qualifies this admission by saying it's true of every other country too (which it is). And then the next sentence: "But there is also, in the American past, an extraordinary amount of decency and hope, of prosperity and ambition, and much, especially, of invention and beauty." This sentence isn't followed by acknowledgement that the same value-judgment is true of other countries, because Lepore, as a good patriotic liberal American, still implicitly subscribes to the old notion of American exceptionalism (which Zinn, being a deeper thinker, rejected--and this wasan "analytical advance"). Her agenda is to celebrate the U.S.--to defend it against "critics" like Zinn--as a French historian might celebrate France, a British historian might celebrate Britain, etc. There isn't much explanatory value in this sort of patriotic narrative history.
I'd also note, in defense of Zinn, that it isn't true he does "nothing but" criticize the United States, as Lepore says. As a serious thinker, unlike Lepore, he knows that the very idea of criticizing the United States is meaningless, since the United States isn't a single coherent entity. Being a nation, it's an artificial construction that has innumerable dimensions. Zinn criticizes the U.S. government; he celebrates the American people, especially those who have resisted oppression. He has a far more sophisticated analytical method than a Lepore.
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