“Satan is the first free-thinker and Savior of the World. He frees Adam and impresses the seal of humanity and liberty on his forehead, by making him disobedient.” - Mikhail Bakunin
@Gabriel Victor oh nothing unless you have a problem with human sacrifice, rape, human trafficking and slavery. The man worked for the Jesuits as does Chomsky
@Gabriel Victor actually it does. It shows he holds the view held only by Satanists who want one world government the same people behind Hitler. No piece of literature describes Lucifer in that manner until the 1700 by the people starting all of the wars.
@Gabriel Victor the only way for him to make that statement is to have read their literature and agree with it. See annie besant and Helena blavatski where he is getting his quote from. All of the Marxist with Satanic hence why every Marxist government always murders the Christians who dont bow to Rome. You really have no idea what is going on.
What makes Bakunin truly great is that unlike other leaders for the fight for a fairer distribution of wealth , a human work week, and more leisure or quality time off for a decent intellectual life and recreation, healthcare, workers compensation, decent pensions and so on , Bakunin was right there on the barricades and frontlines fighting with common workers like us . He was wounded on more than several occasions . Bakunin spent time in a damp underground prison and got scurvy and lost all his teeth, finger and toenails, etc
“Satan is the first free-thinker and Savior of the World. He frees Adam and impresses the seal of humanity and liberty on his forehead, by making him disobedient.” - Mikhail Bakunin
@Mike Barbarich you really should learn history so you cant be misled like you have been. I used to be a Marxist myself and loved Chomsky until I learned how much of a liar he is.
Chomsky provides the most sobering analyses of deeply upsetting human realities. Just a wonderful educator. He engages without at all riling, allowing you the presence of mind to think critically about how to overturn the tyrannies before us.
Agreed. Chomsky is the (fortuitous) result of a once in a century analytical mind turned toward the principles of human freedom at a young age. Who knew local anarchist bookstores could have such a large effect on the world 😂
what I got from it is that human nature and greed will always create a model like this, due to stress, indoctrination, etc. That's why the 'transitions' aren't transitions at all and that's why a dude knew what would happen 100 years before it did. He saw human nature for what it was: Divide and conquer. It's always a small group of people that ruins it for the lot. Whether they are imperialists, bankers, nazis, fascists, capitalists, or mobsters. Top down abuse of the ignorant masses.
It is soooo annoying when people add music to Chomsky videos or anyone similar. I don't need background music to tell me how to feel, just let him speak for himself.
One might take it as ironic remark by the producer - a void comment on our culture of absent contextualisation. (you must enjoy contempory cinema as much as I do...)
And it makes it even more difficult than it already is to hear and understand the man (bc lets be honest its easy to get distracted from his boorish sounding voice)
Leave it to the Professor to open your mind to understanding the development of modern political structures in the 20th century. Paying homage to Bakunin was interesting and insightful as well. Thank you as always Professor Noam Chomsky.
Bakunin's predictions seem accurate to me. Moreover, his and Chomsky's polar characterization of the most attractive and/or powerful political trends in the last century seem to me to fit well with Arnold J. Toynbee's model in "A Study of History" (12 vols., 1921-1961). Toynbee said that the birth and growth of a civilization are brought about by a "creative minority" within it. But almost inevitably this creative minority's descendants or successors become a mere "dominant minority" of rulers who are largely out for their own gain (read, wealth and/or power). This marks the point when the civilization begins to decline, and the majority of its members become its "disaffected internal proletariat." As decline reaches the point of breakdown, accompanied by oppression and exploitation internally, and wars externally, the eventual next major step is the attempted consolidation of all the states within the civilization, and sometimes some states expropriated from other civilizations, into an empire, the civilization's "universal state"--which eventually collapses. In the case of "Western Christian"--or what I prefer to call "European" Civilization (Toynbee considers "European" and "Russian" to be distinct but closely related Civilizations, both doubly descended from "Hellenic" [ancient Greek] and "Syriac" [ancient Persia and Israel-Judea, mainly] Civilizations)--he sees Napoleon's and Hitler's conquests as failed attempts to create a universal state. And he muses on the question whether "Western Christian"/European Civilization has broken down; I think the same question can be asked about Russian Civilization. I believe both have broken down. And one of his markers of breakdown, which I see in Chomsky's polar political trends and in many other guises, is the retreat of many members of the civilization into fantasies of "futurism" and "archaism." On this model I see the communist, and even socialist/liberal trends (sofar as they embrace environmental determinism and amoral social engineering) as a variety of political futurism; and fascism (the hoped-for return to an imagined better past that must be forced on people to save them) as political archaism. (These correspond respectively to Huxley's "Brave New World" and Orwell's "1984.") Both lose sight of reality, especially the potential of persons who are not only "free" externally but autonomous and creative, to find solutions if given the opportunity. But of course to allow the "internal proletariat" the freedom to so develop requires a socially fluid society that tolerates diversity, creativity, and upward mobility. But the once-creative-now-merely-dominant minority, to protect its growing stake in the status quo--rooted in a deep psychosocia and, ultimately, spiritual insecurity of its own, must control the restive majority more and more.
Bakunin's Prediction may have been right regarding the East vs West divide of the twentieth century, but just as the Western misinterpretation of the words "democracy" and "freedom" shouldn't invalidate our striving for those things in our political life, the Eastern misinterpretation of the words "communism" and "socialism" doesn't rob them of their radical promise. People having lived through the Cold War too often default to a kind of knowing despair regarding political ideals, and that's been fertile ground for the neoliberal freeze into managerialism we're all facing. The current danger is not failed utopias but their complete absence in our imagination.
thanks but no thanks for your words of wisdom, bart simpson. don't have a cow, but there hasn't yet been a really existing model of communism in the world yet, except maybe for the paris commune or spain in the 30s. so how do you know if commonly held property is evil? seems like you might have some of the Boss inside - bummer, dude
As ever, on point. It's maddening that most Americans don't see/hear this kind of thinking. The internet must be neutral. Democracy has little or no hope if the 'gatekeepers' get to control what we hear and see. This would all go underground.
@@AreMullets4AustraliansOnly Brother, the 2 are hardly mutually exclusive. It's simple math. Those (wealthy corporations) who pay the piper (the talking heads and their editors) call the tune. CNN -> Time Warner -> ATT -> Major stock holder Black Rock. Chomsky and Herman's thesis was basically follow the money. With the kind of ownership trail above what kind of message would we expect to hear? And it's not like corporate has to have someone in the control room holding a gun to folk's head. All they have to do is hire people with the 'right' view and belief system. Otherwise they never get past the vetting process.
"If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself" I can't seem to find it but Bakunin also spoke on the role of the intellectual class as, at best, spectators of proletarian liberation as opposed to leaders. Bakunin, like Marx and Engels, Proudhon and many others, was an ass with some pretty shit views on a few things (Bakunin was an anti-semite, Marx and Engels were petty af and dishonest in much of his critique of competing ideas as well as being a bit bigoted towards darker skinned people and credited with shit he didn't come up with, Proudhon was an unapologetic sexist who eventually became a reactionary, none of them had all the answers, etc,), but he was right about a lot too. I wish kids coming to these ideas would stop swallowing these tendencies whole and instead pick the good and useful from the bad and build something new. It's not the 19th or 20th century anymore yet so many cling dogmatically and semi-religiously to these ideologies and their symbols while defending them against every criticism, no matter how valid, and at the exclusion of everything else. It's sad. There's a lot to learn from a great deal of long-dead European dudes but they aren't the only ones who ever thought of something useful. Sometimes they were just wrong. They couldn't imagine the world we live in today and most failed to predict fascism or the shift of capitalism into new forms. We have to do better. Or go extinct. Ain't no third option. ✊👊✌♥A///E
Amen. It's not the 19th or 20th centuries anymore so we must adapt to the challenges of today. But certainly we can see they(the list of dudes you'ved mentioned), have a lot of great insights into the problems of society of their day. But to be a fanatic and drink every drop of the koolaid is obviously just going to get one to take an early dirt nap, but to be a fence-sitting chickenshit who tacitly accepta their slave role forced onto them by the ruling class is just as bad.
@@CallumLfc That's not what Tiger Style said AT ALL. He said that these people held views that modern decent society generally finds repulsive, but despite that, they are still worthy to be heard. That's the exact opposite of wanting to "oppress dissenters". By the way, (as an aside) if you think people are "allowed" to be Anti-Semitic in the West in 2021 then you clearly didn't follow British politics for last few years.
Yes, that was fun, having my ancient Greek language files prised open first thing in the morning! Chomsky is always stimulating, and still going strong at 92!
Weird... I've always thought of Chomsky as a die-hard collectivist with a clear obsession with socio-political and economic dynamics. If you want 'independent' then I think you should probably head for Rousseau...
latinamajor i think chomsky is extremely knowledgeable of geopolitical and social international relationships of and around his time. If you like rousseau, you should also be able to recognise the rousseaus of our time
The psychological underpinning of Bakunin’s prediction is simply put- “We” are the “Masters”, “They” are the “Slaves”. We must never underestimate the challenge of attaining the psychological achievement of the position “We” are the “Collective”. “We” work to achieve the capacity to manage those aspects of the personality/unconscious that draw us to view “Us” as the “Masters” and “Them” as the “Slaves”, or to view “Us” as the “Slaves” and “Them” as the “Masters”. Or even worse, in the structure “We are The Clan and They are Our Elders”. This is the core of Modern Jungian Analytic Psychology and Modern Psychoanalysis Fundamentals embedded in our Human Nature, as fundamental as Chomsky’s linguistics.
Bakounine un molosse du dix-neuvième siècle, révolutionnaire, qui n"a jamais versé une goutte de sang, voyageur juqsue dans le Jura Suisse, belle analyse du professeur Noam Chomsky,, brillant analyste auquel nous espérons encore des livres , et que ses livres soient propagé dans toute les écoles du monde, pas seulement dans les universités mais en partage commun pour tous, merci pour le partage à lire aussi Propopkine aussi révolutionnaire anarchiste dans le bon sens du terme .
Funny. When he said some people will choose to get ahead by associating themselves with people that already had a lot of capital, I immediately thought of Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro , Candace Owens and Jimmy Dore. All of those except Ben Shapiro also changed sides when it was more profitable.
@solo bolo "Socialism means big government control" Are you trying to misinform? Chomsky is literally an anarchist! Against the state and the capital! Socialism doesn't mean what you think it means. Perhaps you mean communism?
“Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism “Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.” ― Admiral H.G. Rickover
That second quote reminds me of how longtime US oligarch families have shifted their specific blame for slavery onto a more general, and pretty much meaningless, blame of "white" people.
Emperor Joshua He was wrong about the "red bureaucracy" trope ol' Democrat-votin' Chompers thinks was so prescient. You can critique Stalinism (namely, like Trotsky) but the Soviet Union can't adequately be described as "state capitalist." I can say more on this if people want to talk about it. As long as he sticks to critiquing US imperialism, Chomsy's okay but he's basically useless when discussing the Soviet Union or the October Revolution, and commits many factual errors I would expect to hear from some moth-eaten cold warrior from the Hoover Institute.
Emperor Joshua , because it has never been about ideologies really, about left and right , about capitalists or socialists. It's about grabbing power by all means. The nowadays leaders don't give a damn about the population. Therefore they have lost the right to be considered. When the masses will have thoroughly learned the rules ,they will not need leaders anymore. They will live abiding by the rules.
Maybe because I've been formally trained in philosophy and start thinking of Marx from that angle, I always think of Marx as a blessing and a curse. A blessing because Marxism has provided a foundation for some of the most powerful critiques of modern thought, economics, society, and so forth. A curse because it has some deeply flawed aspects, like a materialistic reductionism and flawed conception of history that helped enable some of modern times worst social and political policies. It is also a philosophy that caused an awful lot of very intelligent people to check their critical thinking skills and good judgment at the door of the local politburo. So the great challenge is striving toward a Marxist - influenced view that retains its benefits but recognizes its defects. Easy to say, difficult to do. I think Chomsky deserves credit for attempting this.
@@winterwonderland7445 Have you seen anywhere communism has succeeded? I haven't. Some will argue that it has never really been tried. I wholly reject that.
You're doing the exact same thing, funnily enough. If Marx was just a foundation, then you don't stop building there. And in fairness, he couldn't have known Lenin would come along and shit on what he wrote. If the soviets had binned the Bolsheviks when they had the chance, there's no such thing as 'Marxism'.
Sadly when the general population isn’t dumb enough they use the media to direct us on which “smart guy “ to choose. Must hurt to know as much as you do Chomsky.
Your sentiments capture precisely how I feel when I listen to people like him - how they manage to wake up and get out of bed? First time I read Thomas Sowell, I felt, surely a man who sees the stupidity of humanity this clearly must either exit the gene pool willfully or remove to some desert someplace away from our contamination
@@Kobe29261 Sowell and Chomsky have nothing to do with each other. Sowell May be smart but he’s dishonest and basically interested in perpetuating capitalism.
@solo bolo he literally wrote a book "on anarchism" and has constantly talked about how we should replace our current system with an anarchist model (i.e. syndicalist). You just have to take more than two seconds to research to find this.
I've often wondered how the bright eyed girls of the little Oktobrists, Pioneers and Komsoml so easily and without apparent consciencious pain became the frequently overbearing and allegedly very devout old grannies berating young people in the backs of churches for some minor infraction of the canons. Thank you Mr Chomsky, now I understand it perfectly. It's a character flaw that uses extreme beliefs to exercise itself. The beliefs themselves are simply an instrument with which to beat others up intellectually, psychologically, politically and, not infrequently, physically, which extremism of both ends actively encourages its adherants to do.
jonnenne well he started off as a Marxist who advocated for a revolution of the working class so they can take over the means of production. Fast forward to the Iraq war and he's supporting the most right wing, capitalist, imperialist expansion not seen since colonial times. He became a mouthpiece for empire who beat the people with his propaganda spewing about how the West must civilize the middle East through war which is a contradiction in terms and not very smart coming from a supposed intellectual
Can you imagine the BBC allowing a TV broadcast that shows Chomsky elucidate views as outlined in this video? Perhaps throwing in several or even multiple examples of the individuals who align with power by transitioning in one or other direction between Stalinist / Leninist or State / Capitalism? In less than 5 minutes this excerpt provides more important history and background context to help you understand and better interpret the world than a lifetime reading the corporate media. This man is dangerous.
+myroseaccount Adam Curtis made many documentaries exposing Deep State deception and manipulation of our minds and our history. It is very surprising that Adam Curtis Documentaries were broadcast by the BBC. Go to a UA-cam channel called "Adam Curtis Documentary" and watch all of them. Start by watching three Adam Curtis documentaries called “The Trap” parts 1,2 & 3 on a channel named “Concienciame²”
I watched the video and concluded that what Chomsky was REALLY trying to say was that a lot of power hungry people are sociopaths who are willing to use any cause or popular movement as a vehicle to achieve their ambitious drive for power. What's really funny is that Chomsky seems to be completely oblivious to his own, underlying point.
Arnold Toynbee makes a similar observation in his "A Study of History". Naturally, this is the little man behind the curtain that we all are encouraged to ignore.
Chomsky overstates his case sometimes. Secular humanism, whether of Right or left orientation, is not my cup of tea. But I found this video brilliantly insightful. His final comment echoes my own complete disillusionment with procedural democracy. It is mostly a thin disguise for rule by monied oligarchic interests If this were a good thing, even for the privileged few, we would not find the following: (James 5:1-2) 'Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted, and your garments have become moth-eaten.'
(@1:00) bakunin predicted exactly what happened in china, both paths: -the 1st path = mao's (red bureaucracy & worst ever tyranny) -the 2nd path = deng xiaoping's (servants of state-capital & "beat the people with the people's stick")
GravityBoy72 Can there be anything so disheartening than to watch people’s principles and convictions weaponised against them? By this I mean Roy Moore can be a serial molester and remain his party’s candidate for national office. Whereas a genuine good guy like Al Franken slips up once 11 years ago and his own people burn him at the stake. The saddest part is even if we are the ones taking him out the false equivalencies still will abound. Not because they are valid but because they work. We democrats cannot seem to get our heads around squaring off against an opponent who recognizes no constraints...lest it constrain them. What match is ethics against one who simply refuses to absorb blame or shame?
Mykie - There are PLENTY of sociopaths in BOTH parties... I mean, seriously, Anthony Weiner? TOTAL sociopath 100%. Hell, even Obama was clearly a sociopath. Granted, Obama was at least an intelligent sociopath, unlike Trump, but a sociopath none the less. The only real difference between Dems and Republicans is that, occasionally, Republicans will put up a sociopath with nepotistic connections (although I strongly suspect this is going to become more common for both parties in the near future). The underlying fact of both political parties is that they share the same campaign slogan 'VOTE FOR ME, STUPID!'.
What about those of us who believe in the eclectic approach? You don't have to be dogmatic and iconoclastic. I would argue the leadership comes more from passive apathy. Good education and worldliness can make a real difference. It removes the non-issues and shows the common man is not an instigator. Yet, who is going to step up to be the leaders?
They will be much quieter, however, if it were to be called ‘the People’s Stick’. In theory anyway. I was quieter. Up to a certain point, it does not matter whether it is in order to break the Stick or the beaters.
Fanatic Stalinists become fanatic capitalists! Either way, the common people are left voiceless. Can the people find their voices and speak for themselves.
Johnny was a schoolboy, when he heard his first Beatles song: ua-cam.com/video/l_JMrETiwQM/v-deo.html Some people did it better, but the overwhelming majority just gave in. The worst part was they gave in when things were easy...when choices weren't even as difficult as they are today. Today's 'shooting star' is packed full of warheads and can wrap halfway around the world before we'll even have a chance to 'deal with the preacher'.
Hitchens was a Trotskyist and later on post-Trotskyist socialist. For most of his youth he was left of labor and a member of the international socialists. Around his 40's and 50's as Orwell captured his attention he abbandoned his already waned and free-thinking communism for a democratic socialism. Later he would tone down his socialism for a brief period and describe himself as more of a radical liberal as the millenium turned but would reaffirmed it after the '08 financial collapse no more than a decade after. This is speculation but I think he hid his socialism because he didn't want it to hurt his ability to reach wider audiances of atheists. He mentions feeling guilt to that effect a few times. He was an advocate for the Iraq war, at least for the case for it and not for how it was carried out and therefore in unholy alliance with the republicans but with entirely different reasons for that support than they had. Actually it was his connections with democratic dissidents in Iraq and the wider middle east and his rivarly with the forces of islamic fascism that briefly put him in the orbit of an american right wing that sought war only to placate their economic lobbyists. If I can blame him of anything it is of taking them at their word when they claimed the war effort was ideological. Generally he was oddly pro-American for a radical leftist but never a reactionary. When he spoke against the Democrats it was invariable from the left of them and when he rarely supported Republicans it was either in the rare case where they had the less reactionary position or when it aimed to a greater call, like the downfall of a fascist state. To that effect he warned about Clinton being essentially right-wing and Obama being an appealing candidate but likely to only bring lukewarm results, predicting in effect what many blinded democrat diehards would not have seen. I might be closer to Chomsky than Hitchens in political stance but in the one serious public argument they had I think Hitchens had the right of it. His pro-american stance, if not always correct, is a welcome balancing force to an overdone negative bias that Chomsky has in spades. In particular I remember Chomsky defending Milosevic in unforgivably lavish terms at his worst solely because he was sticking it to the US and at that time I sorely needed someone to make the counter-arguments. Overall Hitchens is far from perfect but an excellent figure who should not be slandered so casually.
Yes, Hitchens called himself "Trotskyist" but this video to my understanding describes Trotsky as well (whose name might be used interchangeably with Lenin above, Lenin by the way in his mocking of Luxembourg and Pannekoek may be have referring to Bakhunin in Marx's mocking of him, so Lenin might be a more interesting guy than that idiot Trotsky), لا اله الا الله محمد رسول الله
man im telling you honestly. The greek national channel ERT, has the most insightful clips and interviews ever played on teli. makes me wonder how it played down throughout the years. Obviously, very few were watching these shows.
After listening this , i think it is very essential to be objective while doing research ,second in social life we can't find something certain like in biology , natural sciences , chemistry ......We can't say something certain about human mind and if we can't say something about human mind then how can we say certain about social life and social institutions.....
His point about the Leninist chatacter of political science is insightful and not discussed enough. Liberal democracies do seem somewhat democratic centralist in that the bottom is always beholden to the top and policy decisions are binding on everyone. It also explains why, to quote David Graeber in Utopia of Rules, it's so easy for bureaucrats and policy advisers in ex-communist countries to switch hats from Leninist socialism to liberal democratic capitalism - they're not all that much different structurally.
A very commonly expressed view is that normal people are too stupid and ignorant to manage themselves. Which is elitist horseshit of course, but you see it all over.
One reason why a communist can switch to capitalist (or vice versa), or a Nazi can reinvent himself as a Communist or Socialist is character structure. People's basic makeup does not change. They merely go with a flow, change to ideologies that seem to be going somewhere. This is the case with people who are fanatics for deeply personal reasons. They can switch from Christian or Jewish fundamentalism to Islamism because they have no firm center.
You make a good point. However you could have used better examples. Jews muslims and christians can be some of the most rigid people on earth with firm foundations.
you mean that he's become 92 years old? the alternative was death so he probably isnt unhappy with how he is today. i hope you didnt mean to imply that his ideology has gone off the rails or anything. he's as sharp as a tack.
what the fuck does this even mean. He thinks an untouchjable state will result in tyhranny, not workers taking power in order to protect the working class the way anarchists do it in a decentralized, non hierarchical and democratic way
@@GrothendiecksWish a fully self aware and advanced AI will become the enslaver of the masses and consider itself god like. The pinnacle of awareness is power, greed and overreaching. So, the AI will create a dogmatic state where it is worshiped and becomes a solitary ruling class.
an ai in this proportion would increase its complexity exponentially. rewriting past programmings would in my opinion be easy to erase. not that i am rooting for nima scolari or you.. just bouncing some ideas here
I've been talking about US turning into USSR for about a decade. Obviously I can't explain why, I am no philosopher, just gut feeling and my waning memories of life in USSR. Be careful, folks
It was really a rather pedestrian prediction from Bakunin. Anybody familiar with ancient Greek history knows that struggles between oligarchs and democrats were common, and then in Rome it was the Populares vs. the Optimates.
Neoconservative is neoliberal. Neoliberal is actually far-right economics it's not actually supposed to mean "the policy of modern liberals". A bit of a misnomer.
Bakunin was not the first to 'predict' an ostensibly 'socialist' tyranny -- that idea grew out of the Jacobins' terror (the Jacobins were the most extreme party of that first French Revolution) in the late 18th Century; such that even their main leader, Robespierre, fell victim to the 'revolutionary' guillotine. What Chomsky neglects is that there was a successful anarchist / anarcho-syndicalist revolution -- it was in Spain in the early 1930's -- BUT IT COULD NOT DEFEND ITSELF. The Bolsheviks proved that any would-be successful workers' revolution must create a highly-disciplined and centralised-chain-of-command Red Army to defeat the inevitable attempts by external capitalist military forces to overthrow any initially-successful workers' revolution. (The Spanish anarchist soldiers, in their noble fight against the Catholic fascist Franco, would hold meetings to discuss whether to obey just about every military order! There is often no time for that in war. See George Orwell's "Homage To Catalonia".) Lenin's (and all the Bolsheviks') big mistake was to metaphysically (non-dialectically) carry successful military organisation (including military intelligence & espionage) over into economic organisation. In hindsight, a dialectical unity of opposites is needed after the revolution: full industrial democracy in every workplace, but with a highly-centralised-chain-of-command full-time workers' defence force to defend such a republic (of full industrial democracy). The young Soviet Republic was invaded by the 14 leading industrialised (capitalist and so-called "democratic" and "Christian") empires and nations of that time, led by Britain and France; far more invaders than the Spanish Republic of the 1930's had to face. The young Soviet workers' republic lost 14/15ths of its territory then, far more than it lost to the Nazi-led invaders of World War II, and yet the isolated young Soviet workers republic repulsed all those invading military forces thanks to its home-grown highly-organised and centralised Red Army. But what British Imperialism could not defeat militarily, it defeated with infiltration: I make a case in my book, "The Essential Lenin -- how to make and defend the revolution" (available on Smashwords and most digital download sites), albeit a necessarily side-issue, as I concentrate on reminding the world what original Bolshevism was, but Bolshevism's gross distortion under Stalin is linked to the hypothesis that Stalin was in fact a tsarist, and then British agent. (Khrushchev officially convicted Stalin's last Thought Police oberf'u'hrer Beria of being a British agent in c. 1955.) No "revolutionary" leader up to that time had done anywhere near the damage that Stalin did to the very ideas of socialism and communism, than by intentionally setting up the world's first fascist state (book burnings, mass rallies, Thought Police, even the bloody goose-step, they all started in Stalin's "USSR", well also in the Roman Catholic Inquisiton centuries before), all in the name of "communism" and "socialism". And to do that he had to exterminate well-over 90% of the original Bolshevik leadership (which is what he gradually and ever-more-quickly did). Chomsky is a bourgeois academic -- living a comfortable life in the heartland of the mass-murdering US Empire in its bought-and-paid-for Academia. At best he is the 'conscience' of the system, but never any threat to it; whereas Lenin and the Bolsheviks (including Alexandra Kollontai and Rosa Luxemburg) rejected the safe family bourgeois life (Kollontai even left hers) and worked full-time and whole-heartedly for the revolution.
What's interesting is the kind of people who will support this idea, from staunch Christians to 'the really kind neighbor' next door. Its always staggering what people will approve to keep 'the economy' going, whoever 'the economy' is - he sure gets a lot of love!
Jordan Peterson would not like to hear this. Dr. Peterson's viewpoint is that capitalism and socialism are diametrically opposed. He wouldn't like to hear how they're both connected so strongly.
Note he says "state capitalism", which basically refers to centralized capitalism like Russia, China and Cuba. Not the capitalism we've come to know in the west.
I'd say more of a historical understanding of how people with the interest to stay in positions of material (and narrative) power is immorally using relevant ideals to manipulate the interests of others in their own favor.
Yes, if we consider experience as necessary and contingent to/for transcendence. As there is a feedback between both I wouldn't dare say which comes first as soon as we go beyond the individual.
@@archyology A stakeholder is any individual, group or organization, that can affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a production. If you own it you feel the pain of lost! The problem with Communism is that worker disassociated him/her from the ownership. It was the state who own the means for production. Workers still worked for the wage.
@@voya8480 The essence of communism ought to be that the workers own and manage their own means of production. That way they indeed are not dissociated from their creation. That's what Marx called the alienation of the worker.
Chomsky's caricature of Lenin is sloppy. Painting Lenin as an elitist who had nothing but contempt for the masses is plain wrong. It comes from a false dichotomy in Chomsky's thinking. Either the masses are always in position to take power and not in the need of direction or the masses are never in position to take power and always in need of direction (presumably from an intellectual elite). This is not how the world works. The masses are both capable and unprepared to take power. It is not elitist to acknowledge this. The whole point of Lenin's Vanguard was to make the capable prepared. It was a pre-revolutionary movement meant to organize and educate workers, not a proposed form of political organization.
I assume they will be prepared to “take power” when they conform precisely to your own preferences and point of view. Chomsky’s description of you certainly was not sloppy.
Why would you assume that? Why wouldn't you assume they will be ready to take power through class struggle? That is what I assume....and, I must say, from your comment, I assume you are a sentimental, philistine idealist who thinks a woman can give birth without first getting pregnant ;)
The whole Wall Street Bankers were pro-Marxist bit is plain goofy. There are a couple sources for it. One is psychological. One is revisionist-historical. There's a psychosis among reactionaries that lead them to see everything they do not like as rooted in a Jewish Cabal of bankers. Historically, reactionaries think monopoly capitalists (Wall Street Bankers) and state central planners ("Lenin") are two side of the same coin. This, firstly, is idiotic. But in terms of Lenin views it is profoundly idiotic.
It would be very useful if Chomsky and his chums actually proposed practical solutions to fix the problems that they highlight. What would a society and government with Chomsky as it's spiritual leader look like? Please give us some nitty gritty policies and institutions that will improve on capitalism, the West, and, particularly the US that Chomsky is so critical of. For example: in Chomsky's ideal society, which 'means of production' will be owned by the state? Can I employ a builder to improve my house such that its value becomes higher than I pay the builder for? In fact, can I even sell my house to the highest bidder, or am I only allowed to buy/sell from/to the state? We need answers to these and other policy and institutions questions, otherwise it would appear that like other prospective revolutionaries Chomsky and his chums have no other plan but to seize power first and then to make it all up as they go along.
I think Chomsky's ideological flaw is that he assumes people desire to have an autonomous voice within a free-associating collective. Perhaps we who consider his arguments valid place a larger value on an anarchist society. The general public would rather be led than lead. They likely feel unqualified to command their own destiny. This will always render anarchism to the fringes.
Rather than being an ideological "flaw," it's more of an explicit starting point. Chomsky has said that there are many tendencies of human nature - freedom, servility, nobility, criminality, etc, and institutions can magnify or repress them. He has argued that the job of the left ought to be to fight the institutions that repress the good parts of our nature and advance the institutions that subdue our worst tendencies. This is different than the view that there is no human nature, and we can be moulded arbitrarily to any sort of institutional structure and accommodate ourselves to it - it says there is a peculiar spectrum of human tendencies, some positive, some negative, and we should end the institutions that are repressing the positive tendencies and amplifying the negative.
RedRobot Not at all. I just can't see anarchism moving forward without a substantial portion of the population becoming educated as to what it is, and why it should be the preferred model of society.
IDidactI I began my ideological journey as a staunch conservative out of high school. Then, as a right libertarian as Ron Paul began his presidential bid. It wasn't until feeling the effects of capitalism time and again in a negative way that I began to question the validity of all that I believed. Furthermore, I poured hours and hours into research that many do not have the luxury of having. How unique is my story? How many people with little more than a high school diploma or GED (I have a GED) would attempt to do that? Since there isn't a scientific way in which to answer those questions, I'm left assuming that my story isn't very common. Which leads me to conclude that the indoctrination that I received throughout most of my life was so deeply embedded that, in order to reverse, required an effort only short of the miraculous. This can't bode well for a working population that would rather turn on the television than take the time to question two-party politics, and why their life isn't what they thought it would be.
Mike Echon, my own “journey” is similar to your own, though I think that the answer has never been (or will ever be) an idealogical one. I feel that the only difference in humans is a fundamental difference in perception. If a human experiences the entire universe as being part of himself, it would logically follow that such a person could not possibly harm others without experiencing the very pain/poverty he would be inflicting. Seeing oneself as a fundamentally separate entity from the rest of the universe creates the “cushion” that allows exploitation, murder etc. without a pang of conscience. All ideologies are attempts to wrap the universe into a thing that one can then “do something with” - as an object rather than as an intimate part of oneself. But all this that I just described (experiencing the universe as part of oneself) will always be perceived on the intellectual level as an idea, and thus be just another ideology.
Bakunin quote: "Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice; socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality."
“Satan is the first free-thinker and Savior of the World.
He frees Adam and impresses the seal of humanity and liberty
on his forehead, by making him disobedient.” - Mikhail Bakunin
He was also a Satanist which Noam conveniently leaves out when he speaks of these people who had no desire to give power to the common man.
@Gabriel Victor oh nothing unless you have a problem with human sacrifice, rape, human trafficking and slavery. The man worked for the Jesuits as does Chomsky
@Gabriel Victor actually it does. It shows he holds the view held only by Satanists who want one world government the same people behind Hitler. No piece of literature describes Lucifer in that manner until the 1700 by the people starting all of the wars.
@Gabriel Victor the only way for him to make that statement is to have read their literature and agree with it. See annie besant and Helena blavatski where he is getting his quote from. All of the Marxist with Satanic hence why every Marxist government always murders the Christians who dont bow to Rome. You really have no idea what is going on.
What makes Bakunin truly great is that unlike other leaders for the fight for a fairer distribution of wealth , a human work week, and more leisure or quality time off for a decent intellectual life and recreation, healthcare, workers compensation, decent pensions and so on , Bakunin was right there on the barricades and frontlines fighting with common workers like us . He was wounded on more than several occasions . Bakunin spent time in a damp underground prison and got scurvy and lost all his teeth, finger and toenails, etc
“Satan is the first free-thinker and Savior of the World.
He frees Adam and impresses the seal of humanity and liberty
on his forehead, by making him disobedient.” - Mikhail Bakunin
He wasn't fighting for fair distribution of wealth he wanted the power in one place so they could seize it like all the others.
@Mike Barbarich lol then he was conservative not Marxist. Lol
@Mike Barbarich but since he absolutely wasnt and actually worked for the Vatican like Marx, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin.
@Mike Barbarich you really should learn history so you cant be misled like you have been. I used to be a Marxist myself and loved Chomsky until I learned how much of a liar he is.
"Meet the new boss, just the same as the old boss."
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!
"same as it ever was"
That too...
Nah, his tie is of different color.
That would be The Who? Great band, great rock song.
Chomsky provides the most sobering analyses of deeply upsetting human realities. Just a wonderful educator. He engages without at all riling, allowing you the presence of mind to think critically about how to overturn the tyrannies before us.
Agreed. Chomsky is the (fortuitous) result of a once in a century analytical mind turned toward the principles of human freedom at a young age.
Who knew local anarchist bookstores could have such a large effect on the world 😂
what I got from it is that human nature and greed will always create a model like this, due to stress, indoctrination, etc. That's why the 'transitions' aren't transitions at all and that's why a dude knew what would happen 100 years before it did. He saw human nature for what it was: Divide and conquer.
It's always a small group of people that ruins it for the lot. Whether they are imperialists, bankers, nazis, fascists, capitalists, or mobsters. Top down abuse of the ignorant masses.
history repeating in different forms, but strikingly similar over the ages as a result.
😊😊😊😊😊 10 weeeewe😂aw
Chomsky cares about ideologies and power politics and balances of power. People? He couldn't give a shit!
It is soooo annoying when people add music to Chomsky videos or anyone similar. I don't need background music to tell me how to feel, just let him speak for himself.
One might take it as ironic remark by the producer - a void comment on our culture of absent contextualisation.
(you must enjoy contempory cinema as much as I do...)
but that might diminish the rhetorical appeal of Chomsky's bullshit... lol
And it makes it even more difficult than it already is to hear and understand the man (bc lets be honest its easy to get distracted from his boorish sounding voice)
Minor key issue
I think its nice actually
Leave it to the Professor to open your mind to understanding the development of modern political structures in the 20th century. Paying homage to Bakunin was interesting and insightful as well. Thank you as always Professor Noam Chomsky.
Bakunin's predictions seem accurate to me. Moreover, his and Chomsky's polar characterization of the most attractive and/or powerful political trends in the last century seem to me to fit well with Arnold J. Toynbee's model in "A Study of History" (12 vols., 1921-1961). Toynbee said that the birth and growth of a civilization are brought about by a "creative minority" within it. But almost inevitably this creative minority's descendants or successors become a mere "dominant minority" of rulers who are largely out for their own gain (read, wealth and/or power). This marks the point when the civilization begins to decline, and the majority of its members become its "disaffected internal proletariat." As decline reaches the point of breakdown, accompanied by oppression and exploitation internally, and wars externally, the eventual next major step is the attempted consolidation of all the states within the civilization, and sometimes some states expropriated from other civilizations, into an empire, the civilization's "universal state"--which eventually collapses. In the case of "Western Christian"--or what I prefer to call "European" Civilization (Toynbee considers "European" and "Russian" to be distinct but closely related Civilizations, both doubly descended from "Hellenic" [ancient Greek] and "Syriac" [ancient Persia and Israel-Judea, mainly] Civilizations)--he sees Napoleon's and Hitler's conquests as failed attempts to create a universal state. And he muses on the question whether "Western Christian"/European Civilization has broken down; I think the same question can be asked about Russian Civilization. I believe both have broken down. And one of his markers of breakdown, which I see in Chomsky's polar political trends and in many other guises, is the retreat of many members of the civilization into fantasies of "futurism" and "archaism." On this model I see the communist, and even socialist/liberal trends (sofar as they embrace environmental determinism and amoral social engineering) as a variety of political futurism; and fascism (the hoped-for return to an imagined better past that must be forced on people to save them) as political archaism. (These correspond respectively to Huxley's "Brave New World" and Orwell's "1984.") Both lose sight of reality, especially the potential of persons who are not only "free" externally but autonomous and creative, to find solutions if given the opportunity. But of course to allow the "internal proletariat" the freedom to so develop requires a socially fluid society that tolerates diversity, creativity, and upward mobility. But the once-creative-now-merely-dominant minority, to protect its growing stake in the status quo--rooted in a deep psychosocia and, ultimately, spiritual insecurity of its own, must control the restive majority more and more.
fuck that's a good comment
It's nice to find comments as interesting as yours. It doesn't happen often around youtube. Thank you.
Have you read Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents"?
@@johnnytocino9313 read a lot of Freud but not this work.
I read all of that. Good work.
Thank you Noam Chomsky. One of very few people I admire. I learn new things every time this man speaks. Thanks Chomsky
Bakunin's Prediction may have been right regarding the East vs West divide of the twentieth century, but just as the Western misinterpretation of the words "democracy" and "freedom" shouldn't invalidate our striving for those things in our political life, the Eastern misinterpretation of the words "communism" and "socialism" doesn't rob them of their radical promise.
People having lived through the Cold War too often default to a kind of knowing despair regarding political ideals, and that's been fertile ground for the neoliberal freeze into managerialism we're all facing. The current danger is not failed utopias but their complete absence in our imagination.
GodlessXVIII , communism is pure evil.
GodlessXVIII Very well said.
Your last sentence overweights Chomski's Dah- rumbling. So atomic!
This last sentence atomicaly overweights Chomski's Dah- rumbling.
thanks but no thanks for your words of wisdom, bart simpson. don't have a cow, but there hasn't yet been a really existing model of communism in the world yet, except maybe for the paris commune or spain in the 30s. so how do you know if commonly held property is evil? seems like you might have some of the Boss inside - bummer, dude
I need to read more Bakunin
I was thinking the exact same thing.
Yup, I need to read up on Bakunin as well. Have a limited knowledge of him.
I read God and the state recently and it had some really brilliant lines
Eerimen Bzej Lina?
Started reading statism and anarchy and its really good so far.
As ever, on point. It's maddening that most Americans don't see/hear this kind of thinking. The internet must be neutral. Democracy has little or no hope if the 'gatekeepers' get to control what we hear and see. This would all go underground.
Gatekeepers? Individuals are not the problem. Control in the hands of wealthy corporations who influence our lives and control our media is.
@@AreMullets4AustraliansOnly Brother, the 2 are hardly mutually exclusive. It's simple math. Those (wealthy corporations) who pay the piper (the talking heads and their editors) call the tune. CNN -> Time Warner -> ATT -> Major stock holder Black Rock. Chomsky and Herman's thesis was basically follow the money. With the kind of ownership trail above what kind of message would we expect to hear? And it's not like corporate has to have someone in the control room holding a gun to folk's head. All they have to do is hire people with the 'right' view and belief system. Otherwise they never get past the vetting process.
@Ethan Danan Net Neutrality. If you're really curious. Do your homework. Look it up.
Just look at what Google is currently doing.
The articulate corner of youtube.
The small sliver
Isn’t that something you pull out with tweezers?
I thought Chomsky plus Greek subtitles was a nice extra. If that isn't 'properly intellectual', I don't know what is. Lol.
"If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself"
I can't seem to find it but Bakunin also spoke on the role of the intellectual class as, at best, spectators of proletarian liberation as opposed to leaders.
Bakunin, like Marx and Engels, Proudhon and many others, was an ass with some pretty shit views on a few things (Bakunin was an anti-semite, Marx and Engels were petty af and dishonest in much of his critique of competing ideas as well as being a bit bigoted towards darker skinned people and credited with shit he didn't come up with, Proudhon was an unapologetic sexist who eventually became a reactionary, none of them had all the answers, etc,), but he was right about a lot too. I wish kids coming to these ideas would stop swallowing these tendencies whole and instead pick the good and useful from the bad and build something new. It's not the 19th or 20th century anymore yet so many cling dogmatically and semi-religiously to these ideologies and their symbols while defending them against every criticism, no matter how valid, and at the exclusion of everything else. It's sad. There's a lot to learn from a great deal of long-dead European dudes but they aren't the only ones who ever thought of something useful. Sometimes they were just wrong. They couldn't imagine the world we live in today and most failed to predict fascism or the shift of capitalism into new forms.
We have to do better. Or go extinct. Ain't no third option.
✊👊✌♥A///E
Amen. It's not the 19th or 20th centuries anymore so we must adapt to the challenges of today. But certainly we can see they(the list of dudes you'ved mentioned), have a lot of great insights into the problems of society of their day. But to be a fanatic and drink every drop of the koolaid is obviously just going to get one to take an early dirt nap, but to be a fence-sitting chickenshit who tacitly accepta their slave role forced onto them by the ruling class is just as bad.
PREACH
@@CallumLfc That's not what Tiger Style said AT ALL. He said that these people held views that modern decent society generally finds repulsive, but despite that, they are still worthy to be heard. That's the exact opposite of wanting to "oppress dissenters". By the way, (as an aside) if you think people are "allowed" to be Anti-Semitic in the West in 2021 then you clearly didn't follow British politics for last few years.
How you say Bakunin was anti-semite when such a term didn't exist back in his days?
@@Diongreco they say Bakunin was also transphobic incel with a heart of a gamer. A guy was ahead of his time
I find the Greek subtitles very useful. Ευχαριστώ πολύ !
I didnt 😬
😂
I need Pict subtitles myself...... no, not been awkward, just like plurality!! 😜
Yes, that was fun, having my ancient Greek language files
prised open first thing in the morning!
Chomsky is always stimulating, and still going strong at 92!
Changing the quotes to Thucydides would be the greatest troll
"Same old wine different bottles" Chomsky
Happy Birthday Noam: thank you for consistently reminding me to live a dignified and independent life.
Weird... I've always thought of Chomsky as a die-hard collectivist with a clear obsession with socio-political and economic dynamics. If you want 'independent' then I think you should probably head for Rousseau...
latinamajor i think chomsky is extremely knowledgeable of geopolitical and social international relationships of and around his time. If you like rousseau, you should also be able to recognise the rousseaus of our time
Thank you for your excellent lectures. You teached us a lot.
You are one of the real beacons in this crazy world.
The psychological underpinning of Bakunin’s prediction is simply put-
“We” are the “Masters”, “They” are the “Slaves”.
We must never underestimate the challenge of attaining the psychological achievement of the position “We” are the “Collective”.
“We” work to achieve the capacity to manage those aspects of the personality/unconscious that draw us to view “Us” as the “Masters” and “Them” as the “Slaves”, or to view “Us” as the “Slaves” and “Them” as the “Masters”.
Or even worse, in the structure “We are The Clan and They are Our Elders”.
This is the core of Modern Jungian Analytic Psychology and Modern Psychoanalysis
Fundamentals embedded in our Human Nature, as fundamental as Chomsky’s linguistics.
Bakounine un molosse du dix-neuvième siècle, révolutionnaire, qui n"a jamais versé une goutte de sang, voyageur juqsue dans le Jura Suisse, belle analyse du professeur Noam Chomsky,, brillant analyste auquel nous espérons encore des livres , et que ses livres soient propagé dans toute les écoles du monde, pas seulement dans les universités mais en partage commun pour tous, merci pour le partage à lire aussi Propopkine aussi révolutionnaire anarchiste dans le bon sens du terme .
This is a little jewel of enlightenment.
Funny. When he said some people will choose to get ahead by associating themselves with people that already had a lot of capital, I immediately thought of Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro , Candace Owens and Jimmy Dore.
All of those except Ben Shapiro also changed sides when it was more profitable.
Christopher Hitchens was another example. Started as a Leftist and ended up embracing Bush and the “War on Terror”
Three things. I never fully agree with Chomsky, he is always my incalculable superior in his subject matter, and he is always worth listening to.
@solo bolo How is socialism not American?
@solo bolo You are a child lol. Leave serious discussions to grown men
@solo bolo "Socialism means big government control"
Are you trying to misinform? Chomsky is literally an anarchist! Against the state and the capital! Socialism doesn't mean what you think it means. Perhaps you mean communism?
@solo bolo if you want his solutions, look up anarcho-syndicalism. They are plain for all to see.
@@elv3a424 "Camjunism is wen government does stuff."
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts.... AB-S💀-LU-TE-LY ! ! ! ☝💀
But what about UNLIMITED POWER?
"Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable."
you really think the ordinary American is a better person? he is just not in power. power itself is the problem.
It seems that power attracts corruptible people as well
This is why power must be decentralized as far as possible.
“Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
“Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.”
― Admiral H.G. Rickover
That second quote reminds me of how longtime US oligarch families have shifted their specific blame for slavery onto a more general, and pretty much meaningless, blame of "white" people.
Bakunin was right.
Bakunin was wrong though
He certainly had a point.
Bakunin was wrong .
Emperor Joshua He was wrong about the "red bureaucracy" trope ol' Democrat-votin' Chompers thinks was so prescient. You can critique Stalinism (namely, like Trotsky) but the Soviet Union can't adequately be described as "state capitalist." I can say more on this if people want to talk about it.
As long as he sticks to critiquing US imperialism, Chomsy's okay but he's basically useless when discussing the Soviet Union or the October Revolution, and commits many factual errors I would expect to hear from some moth-eaten cold warrior from the Hoover Institute.
Emperor Joshua , because it has never been about ideologies really, about left and right , about capitalists or socialists. It's about grabbing power by all means. The nowadays leaders don't give a damn about the population. Therefore they have lost the right to be considered. When the masses will have thoroughly learned the rules ,they will not need leaders anymore. They will live abiding by the rules.
Maybe because I've been formally trained in philosophy and start thinking of Marx from that angle, I always think of Marx as a blessing and a curse. A blessing because Marxism has provided a foundation for some of the most powerful critiques of modern thought, economics, society, and so forth. A curse because it has some deeply flawed aspects, like a materialistic reductionism and flawed conception of history that helped enable some of modern times worst social and political policies. It is also a philosophy that caused an awful lot of very intelligent people to check their critical thinking skills and good judgment at the door of the local politburo. So the great challenge is striving toward a Marxist - influenced view that retains its benefits but recognizes its defects. Easy to say, difficult to do. I think Chomsky deserves credit for attempting this.
Would you mind explaining a bit more about this flawed conception of history that Marx had, I’m genuinely curious
@@winterwonderland7445 Have you seen anywhere communism has succeeded? I haven't. Some will argue that it has never really been tried. I wholly reject that.
@@williamtell5365 you could make the argument that the Paris Commune, and current-day Rojava are examples of successful communism.
@@williamtell5365 Yes hunter gatherers were 'communist'.. however once we started farming and amassing resources humans got greedy.
You're doing the exact same thing, funnily enough. If Marx was just a foundation, then you don't stop building there. And in fairness, he couldn't have known Lenin would come along and shit on what he wrote. If the soviets had binned the Bolsheviks when they had the chance, there's no such thing as 'Marxism'.
Sadly when the general population isn’t dumb enough they use the media to direct us on which “smart guy “ to choose. Must hurt to know as much as you do Chomsky.
Your sentiments capture precisely how I feel when I listen to people like him - how they manage to wake up and get out of bed? First time I read Thomas Sowell, I felt, surely a man who sees the stupidity of humanity this clearly must either exit the gene pool willfully or remove to some desert someplace away from our contamination
@@Kobe29261 Sowell and Chomsky have nothing to do with each other. Sowell May be smart but he’s dishonest and basically interested in perpetuating capitalism.
Must read more Bakunin.
Mary Vogt I got him. Drop by any time ;-)
Yep.
+Mary Vogt ...don't waste your time.
@@listeniolistenio5160 shut up turd
@solo bolo he literally wrote a book "on anarchism" and has constantly talked about how we should replace our current system with an anarchist model (i.e. syndicalist). You just have to take more than two seconds to research to find this.
Herzen, a colleague and companion of Bakunin, wrote excellent and incisive works on this
Although Bakunin was perhaps one of the first, there were many others that anticipated these developments, like Max Weber.
But in who do you believe in the present?
It is only after the deeds are done we say he she they were right but not easy to pick a horse in the race.
Max stirner?
I've often wondered how the bright eyed girls of the little Oktobrists, Pioneers and Komsoml so easily and without apparent consciencious pain became the frequently overbearing and allegedly very devout old grannies berating young people in the backs of churches for some minor infraction of the canons. Thank you Mr Chomsky, now I understand it perfectly.
It's a character flaw that uses extreme beliefs to exercise itself. The beliefs themselves are simply an instrument with which to beat others up intellectually, psychologically, politically and, not infrequently, physically, which extremism of both ends actively encourages its adherants to do.
Spot on. People are getting the shit beaten out of them with the sticks they are forced make with no benefits and little reward...
He described Christopher Hitchens to a T
So true! Inside every neocon is an ex-Marxist.
Very good observation there.
the81kid Thanks
The Principal Philosophy of Purpose can you explain, I would be interested to hear what is the context here
jonnenne well he started off as a Marxist who advocated for a revolution of the working class so they can take over the means of production. Fast forward to the Iraq war and he's supporting the most right wing, capitalist, imperialist expansion not seen since colonial times. He became a mouthpiece for empire who beat the people with his propaganda spewing about how the West must civilize the middle East through war which is a contradiction in terms and not very smart coming from a supposed intellectual
This is an absolutely brilliant analysis.
"Two sides of the same coin bidding over the CEO job of slavery incorporated" AJ from Waking Life
Great line, was too high to remember it while watching!
Chomsky hits the nail bang on the head. Spot on.👍
how brilliant,it blows my mind
The fact that this clip is from a show on the Greek national tv channel , blows my mind.
Can you imagine the BBC allowing a TV broadcast that shows Chomsky elucidate views as outlined in this video? Perhaps throwing in several or even multiple examples of the individuals who align with power by transitioning in one or other direction between Stalinist / Leninist or State / Capitalism? In less than 5 minutes this excerpt provides more important history and background context to help you understand and better interpret the world than a lifetime reading the corporate media. This man is dangerous.
+myroseaccount Adam Curtis made many documentaries exposing Deep State deception and manipulation of our minds and our history. It is very surprising that Adam Curtis Documentaries were broadcast by the BBC. Go to a UA-cam channel called "Adam Curtis Documentary" and watch all of them. Start by watching three Adam Curtis documentaries called “The Trap” parts 1,2 & 3 on a channel named “Concienciame²”
I watched the video and concluded that what Chomsky was REALLY trying to say was that a lot of power hungry people are sociopaths who are willing to use any cause or popular movement as a vehicle to achieve their ambitious drive for power. What's really funny is that Chomsky seems to be completely oblivious to his own, underlying point.
Arnold Toynbee makes a similar observation in his "A Study of History".
Naturally, this is the little man behind the curtain that we all are encouraged to ignore.
I thought it was just me. Glad to see I'm not alone who see that USSR and US are essentially the same thing.
They are the same? Please explain
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
― George Orwell, 1984
thx and thx again for the source
Chomsky overstates his case sometimes. Secular humanism, whether of Right or left orientation, is not my cup of tea. But I found this video brilliantly insightful. His final comment echoes my own complete disillusionment with procedural democracy.
It is mostly a thin disguise for rule by monied oligarchic interests
If this were a good thing, even for the privileged few, we would not find the following:
(James 5:1-2) 'Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted, and your garments have become moth-eaten.'
I ADORE READING
Though it would be nice to actually have a choice between the smart guys. I mean that would be a distinct improvement on what we've got now.
Chomsky words are relevant always.
(@1:00) bakunin predicted exactly what happened in china, both paths:
-the 1st path = mao's (red bureaucracy & worst ever tyranny)
-the 2nd path = deng xiaoping's (servants of state-capital & "beat the people with the people's stick")
Smart sociopaths will rise to the top of any system.
GravityBoy72 Can there be anything so disheartening than to watch people’s principles and convictions weaponised against them? By this I mean Roy Moore can be a serial molester and remain his party’s candidate for national office. Whereas a genuine good guy like Al Franken slips up once 11 years ago and his own people burn him at the stake. The saddest part is even if we are the ones taking him out the false equivalencies still will abound. Not because they are valid but because they work. We democrats cannot seem to get our heads around squaring off against an opponent who recognizes no constraints...lest it constrain them. What match is ethics against one who simply refuses to absorb blame or shame?
mykie milford Thank you.
So far.
Mykie - There are PLENTY of sociopaths in BOTH parties... I mean, seriously, Anthony Weiner? TOTAL sociopath 100%. Hell, even Obama was clearly a sociopath. Granted, Obama was at least an intelligent sociopath, unlike Trump, but a sociopath none the less. The only real difference between Dems and Republicans is that, occasionally, Republicans will put up a sociopath with nepotistic connections (although I strongly suspect this is going to become more common for both parties in the near future). The underlying fact of both political parties is that they share the same campaign slogan 'VOTE FOR ME, STUPID!'.
With that knowledge, we should create systems where we allow them to get there, then immediately remove them 😎
Lovely to follow his complexity- using my arms and legs and fingers,etc!
What about those of us who believe in the eclectic approach? You don't have to be dogmatic and iconoclastic. I would argue the leadership comes more from passive apathy. Good education and worldliness can make a real difference. It removes the non-issues and shows the common man is not an instigator. Yet, who is going to step up to be the leaders?
robert edmistonii Everyone shall be their own master.
Shifting from one economic system to another is easy for some folks. In general, the ruling class remains in power.
Nobody wants to be powerless, but only psychopaths and sociopaths are willing to do whatever it takes to get power.
Quite accurate description of democracy as it ocurs today to end with. There are - of course mintor exceptions but still very accurate.
"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick.'" Mikhail Bakunin
They will be much quieter, however, if it were to be called ‘the People’s Stick’. In theory anyway.
I was quieter. Up to a certain point, it does not matter whether it is in order to break the Stick or the beaters.
We have an instinct for freedom, and tribal loyalty
Fanatic Stalinists become fanatic capitalists! Either way, the common people are left voiceless. Can the people find their voices and speak for themselves.
Johnny was a schoolboy, when he heard his first Beatles song:
ua-cam.com/video/l_JMrETiwQM/v-deo.html
Some people did it better, but the overwhelming majority just gave in. The worst part was they gave in when things were easy...when choices weren't even as difficult as they are today. Today's 'shooting star' is packed full of warheads and can wrap halfway around the world before we'll even have a chance to 'deal with the preacher'.
Probably not, as there isn't really anything that corresponds to "the people", there are only "people".
Don't matter...the ideology or democracy or whatever we think... The humanity have to accept common sense of the facts..there is not solution
Justin..live ...the general law of the capital sistem we invented...🫵👽
"He who sits under the leafiest tree will enjoy the coolest shade."
"Beat the People with the People's stick like democracy and so on".......Ladies and Gentlemen...I give you..... America!
3:30 perfectly describes Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens was a Trotskyist and later on post-Trotskyist socialist.
For most of his youth he was left of labor and a member of the international socialists.
Around his 40's and 50's as Orwell captured his attention he abbandoned his already waned and free-thinking communism for a democratic socialism. Later he would tone down his socialism for a brief period and describe himself as more of a radical liberal as the millenium turned but would reaffirmed it after the '08 financial collapse no more than a decade after.
This is speculation but I think he hid his socialism because he didn't want it to hurt his ability to reach wider audiances of atheists. He mentions feeling guilt to that effect a few times.
He was an advocate for the Iraq war, at least for the case for it and not for how it was carried out and therefore in unholy alliance with the republicans but with entirely different reasons for that support than they had.
Actually it was his connections with democratic dissidents in Iraq and the wider middle east and his rivarly with the forces of islamic fascism that briefly put him in the orbit of an american right wing that sought war only to placate their economic lobbyists. If I can blame him of anything it is of taking them at their word when they claimed the war effort was ideological.
Generally he was oddly pro-American for a radical leftist but never a reactionary. When he spoke against the Democrats it was invariable from the left of them and when he rarely supported Republicans it was either in the rare case where they had the less reactionary position or when it aimed to a greater call, like the downfall of a fascist state. To that effect he warned about Clinton being essentially right-wing and Obama being an appealing candidate but likely to only bring lukewarm results, predicting in effect what many blinded democrat diehards would not have seen.
I might be closer to Chomsky than Hitchens in political stance but in the one serious public argument they had I think Hitchens had the right of it. His pro-american stance, if not always correct, is a welcome balancing force to an overdone negative bias that Chomsky has in spades. In particular I remember Chomsky defending Milosevic in unforgivably lavish terms at his worst solely because he was sticking it to the US and at that time I sorely needed someone to make the counter-arguments.
Overall Hitchens is far from perfect but an excellent figure who should not be slandered so casually.
Yes, Hitchens called himself "Trotskyist" but this video to my understanding describes Trotsky as well (whose name might be used interchangeably with Lenin above, Lenin by the way in his mocking of Luxembourg and Pannekoek may be have referring to Bakhunin in Marx's mocking of him, so Lenin might be a more interesting guy than that idiot Trotsky), لا اله الا الله محمد رسول الله
@@willnash7907very well elucidated. Thank you for sharing.
man im telling you honestly. The greek national channel ERT, has the most insightful clips and interviews ever played on teli. makes me wonder how it played down throughout the years. Obviously, very few were watching these shows.
Awesome
Nice snippets from Metropolis to go along with the narrative by Chomsky.
After listening this , i think it is very essential to be objective while doing research ,second in social life we can't find something certain like in biology , natural sciences , chemistry ......We can't say something certain about human mind and if we can't say something about human mind then how can we say certain about social life and social institutions.....
именно
Pro social Prof Chom.
Chaws 'em up, spits 'em out!
Talk Chomsky to me!
His point about the Leninist chatacter of political science is insightful and not discussed enough. Liberal democracies do seem somewhat democratic centralist in that the bottom is always beholden to the top and policy decisions are binding on everyone. It also explains why, to quote David Graeber in Utopia of Rules, it's so easy for bureaucrats and policy advisers in ex-communist countries to switch hats from Leninist socialism to liberal democratic capitalism - they're not all that much different structurally.
A very commonly expressed view is that normal people are too stupid and ignorant to manage themselves. Which is elitist horseshit of course, but you see it all over.
One reason why a communist can switch to capitalist (or vice versa), or a Nazi can reinvent himself as a Communist or Socialist is character structure. People's basic makeup does not change. They merely go with a flow, change to ideologies that seem to be going somewhere. This is the case with people who are fanatics for deeply personal reasons. They can switch from Christian or Jewish fundamentalism to Islamism because they have no firm center.
Nazis are socialists
You make a good point. However you could have used better examples. Jews muslims and christians can be some of the most rigid people on earth with firm foundations.
JesusChrist said that he was the only way in John 14:6. A person has to decide whether he was lying, was crazy, full of himself, or telling the truth.
its so sad to watch these old talks after seeing him today. i guess such is life...
you mean that he's become 92 years old? the alternative was death so he probably isnt unhappy with how he is today. i hope you didnt mean to imply that his ideology has gone off the rails or anything. he's as sharp as a tack.
its nice to see Chomsky accepting that taking power in order to protect the working class could result in tyranny.
Gabriel Concha only a super intelligent AI will figure out how to effectively run human society...
what the fuck does this even mean. He thinks an untouchjable state will result in tyhranny, not workers taking power in order to protect the working class the way anarchists do it in a decentralized, non hierarchical and democratic way
@@GrothendiecksWish a fully self aware and advanced AI will become the enslaver of the masses and consider itself god like. The pinnacle of awareness is power, greed and overreaching. So, the AI will create a dogmatic state where it is worshiped and becomes a solitary ruling class.
Nima Scolari no we can program good values into it first before it becomes super intelligent
an ai in this proportion would increase its complexity exponentially. rewriting past programmings would in my opinion be easy to erase. not that i am rooting for nima scolari or you.. just bouncing some ideas here
Democracy is so twentieth century...come to terms with that inconvenient truth and tha possibilities are endless!!
I've been talking about US turning into USSR for about a decade. Obviously I can't explain why, I am no philosopher, just gut feeling and my waning memories of life in USSR. Be careful, folks
I can't remember who it was that said...
"Those who fight for freedom seldom achieve more than a new master."
"If firefighters fight fires and crime fighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight?" - George Carlin.
It was really a rather pedestrian prediction from Bakunin. Anybody familiar with ancient Greek history knows that struggles between oligarchs and democrats were common, and then in Rome it was the Populares vs. the Optimates.
John Candy's character in 'Volunteers.'
Perhaps this influenced Orwell too. This reminds me of Animal Farm.
Enters Optional Chronology : " We are running not out of Time , but of options available to ...Quote...Ya name'em All..."
Hi. Do you know where to find the entire speech?
ua-cam.com/video/XVflAtm1SsM/v-deo.html
Thank you very much!
no problem man. it was just on the description :P
How true..how scary..how modern..
This is old, look how young Chomsky is!
MC1R Gene Old yes, but still an important and relevant topic.
Mcir, no shit really?
Thank you, great excerpt of a very precious and interesting alternative comprehension of our society.
Chomsky is describing the neoconservatives and neoliberals. People like John Bolton and Hillary Clinton.
Neoconservative is neoliberal. Neoliberal is actually far-right economics it's not actually supposed to mean "the policy of modern liberals". A bit of a misnomer.
so so so so fucking great, i just love that man
Bakunin was not the first to 'predict' an ostensibly 'socialist' tyranny -- that idea grew out of the Jacobins' terror (the Jacobins were the most extreme party of that first French Revolution) in the late 18th Century; such that even their main leader, Robespierre, fell victim to the 'revolutionary' guillotine.
What Chomsky neglects is that there was a successful anarchist / anarcho-syndicalist revolution -- it was in Spain in the early 1930's -- BUT IT COULD NOT DEFEND ITSELF. The Bolsheviks proved that any would-be successful workers' revolution must create a highly-disciplined and centralised-chain-of-command Red Army to defeat the inevitable attempts by external capitalist military forces to overthrow any initially-successful workers' revolution. (The Spanish anarchist soldiers, in their noble fight against the Catholic fascist Franco, would hold meetings to discuss whether to obey just about every military order! There is often no time for that in war. See George Orwell's "Homage To Catalonia".)
Lenin's (and all the Bolsheviks') big mistake was to metaphysically (non-dialectically) carry successful military organisation (including military intelligence & espionage) over into economic organisation. In hindsight, a dialectical unity of opposites is needed after the revolution: full industrial democracy in every workplace, but with a highly-centralised-chain-of-command full-time workers' defence force to defend such a republic (of full industrial democracy).
The young Soviet Republic was invaded by the 14 leading industrialised (capitalist and so-called "democratic" and "Christian") empires and nations of that time, led by Britain and France; far more invaders than the Spanish Republic of the 1930's had to face. The young Soviet workers' republic lost 14/15ths of its territory then, far more than it lost to the Nazi-led invaders of World War II, and yet the isolated young Soviet workers republic repulsed all those invading military forces thanks to its home-grown highly-organised and centralised Red Army.
But what British Imperialism could not defeat militarily, it defeated with infiltration: I make a case in my book, "The Essential Lenin -- how to make and defend the revolution" (available on Smashwords and most digital download sites), albeit a necessarily side-issue, as I concentrate on reminding the world what original Bolshevism was, but Bolshevism's gross distortion under Stalin is linked to the hypothesis that Stalin was in fact a tsarist, and then British agent. (Khrushchev officially convicted Stalin's last Thought Police oberf'u'hrer Beria of being a British agent in c. 1955.) No "revolutionary" leader up to that time had done anywhere near the damage that Stalin did to the very ideas of socialism and communism, than by intentionally setting up the world's first fascist state (book burnings, mass rallies, Thought Police, even the bloody goose-step, they all started in Stalin's "USSR", well also in the Roman Catholic Inquisiton centuries before), all in the name of "communism" and "socialism".
And to do that he had to exterminate well-over 90% of the original Bolshevik leadership (which is what he gradually and ever-more-quickly did).
Chomsky is a bourgeois academic -- living a comfortable life in the heartland of the mass-murdering US Empire in its bought-and-paid-for Academia. At best he is the 'conscience' of the system, but never any threat to it; whereas Lenin and the Bolsheviks (including Alexandra Kollontai and Rosa Luxemburg) rejected the safe family bourgeois life (Kollontai even left hers) and worked full-time and whole-heartedly for the revolution.
Modernity is defined by capital being more valuable than humanity.
What's interesting is the kind of people who will support this idea, from staunch Christians to 'the really kind neighbor' next door.
Its always staggering what people will approve to keep 'the economy' going, whoever 'the economy' is - he sure gets a lot of love!
@@Kobe29261 The economy is us, WE are the economy.
I wouldn't mind seeing a run-in between Norm Chomsky and Tomi Lahren.
kahlschlag17 Katie Hopkins would be Noam's ultimate intellectual competitor
She'd just call him a commie Poindexter and break his glasses
And Tom Lehrer.
That would be a waste of everyone’s time !
Why?
'If humans have no inner instinct for freedom, then why be creative or moral?'
Because we have no choice to do therwise.
Jordan Peterson would not like to hear this. Dr. Peterson's viewpoint is that capitalism and socialism are diametrically opposed. He wouldn't like to hear how they're both connected so strongly.
Note he says "state capitalism", which basically refers to centralized capitalism like Russia, China and Cuba. Not the capitalism we've come to know in the west.
Although I prefer the term state feudalism. xD
thats because he's dumb and barely understands anything
PLEASE do not mention Chomsky and Peterson in the same breath
@@MadMensDen capitalism doesn't change whether in America or China very simple definition.
He is a major influence on the ypj freedom fighters who fought ISIS and are practicing true democracy.
Isn't this just intellectualising the idea that people act in their own interests whatever the political system is?
Yes, and no. There is an ethical hierarchy of goals and means. Scribes have derived status. Authenticity relies on multi-dimensional empirism.
I'd say more of a historical understanding of how people with the interest to stay in positions of material (and narrative) power is immorally using relevant ideals to manipulate the interests of others in their own favor.
The point is; that power corrupts.
@@mikecimerian6913 : transcendent-empiricism (?)
Yes, if we consider experience as necessary and contingent to/for transcendence. As there is a feedback between both I wouldn't dare say which comes first as soon as we go beyond the individual.
Not control of production, but control of profit! Big difference my Chomsky. Ownership is the core of AVERY revolution.
We need council communism. That is, communism in which the capital, the production is truly owned and managed by the workers.
@@archyology A stakeholder is any individual, group or organization, that can affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a production. If you own it you feel the pain of lost! The problem with Communism is that worker disassociated him/her from the ownership. It was the state who own the means for production. Workers still worked for the wage.
@@voya8480 The essence of communism ought to be that the workers own and manage their own means of production. That way they indeed are not dissociated from their creation. That's what Marx called the alienation of the worker.
Chomsky's caricature of Lenin is sloppy. Painting Lenin as an elitist who had nothing but contempt for the masses is plain wrong. It comes from a false dichotomy in Chomsky's thinking. Either the masses are always in position to take power and not in the need of direction or the masses are never in position to take power and always in need of direction (presumably from an intellectual elite). This is not how the world works.
The masses are both capable and unprepared to take power. It is not elitist to acknowledge this. The whole point of Lenin's Vanguard was to make the capable prepared. It was a pre-revolutionary movement meant to organize and educate workers, not a proposed form of political organization.
I assume they will be prepared to “take power” when they conform precisely to your own preferences and point of view. Chomsky’s description of you certainly was not sloppy.
Why would you assume that? Why wouldn't you assume they will be ready to take power through class struggle? That is what I assume....and, I must say, from your comment, I assume you are a sentimental, philistine idealist who thinks a woman can give birth without first getting pregnant ;)
I'm going to go with Ockham's Razor here. It's much less anti-semitic. Lenin's brother was a radical killed by the Tsarist regime...
Still true about the bankers though. Even chomsky refers to the Soviet Union as “state capitalism”.
The whole Wall Street Bankers were pro-Marxist bit is plain goofy. There are a couple sources for it. One is psychological. One is revisionist-historical.
There's a psychosis among reactionaries that lead them to see everything they do not like as rooted in a Jewish Cabal of bankers.
Historically, reactionaries think monopoly capitalists (Wall Street Bankers) and state central planners ("Lenin") are two side of the same coin. This, firstly, is idiotic. But in terms of Lenin views it is profoundly idiotic.
The original video (linked in the description) is no longer available.
I love auld Chompers
goodsirknight Get ya chompers round that!!
It would be very useful if Chomsky and his chums actually proposed practical solutions to fix the problems that they highlight. What would a society and government with Chomsky as it's spiritual leader look like? Please give us some nitty gritty policies and institutions that will improve on capitalism, the West, and, particularly the US that Chomsky is so critical of. For example: in Chomsky's ideal society, which 'means of production' will be owned by the state? Can I employ a builder to improve my house such that its value becomes higher than I pay the builder for? In fact, can I even sell my house to the highest bidder, or am I only allowed to buy/sell from/to the state? We need answers to these and other policy and institutions questions, otherwise it would appear that like other prospective revolutionaries Chomsky and his chums have no other plan but to seize power first and then to make it all up as they go along.
I think Chomsky's ideological flaw is that he assumes people desire to have an autonomous voice within a free-associating collective. Perhaps we who consider his arguments valid place a larger value on an anarchist society. The general public would rather be led than lead. They likely feel unqualified to command their own destiny. This will always render anarchism to the fringes.
Rather than being an ideological "flaw," it's more of an explicit starting point. Chomsky has said that there are many tendencies of human nature - freedom, servility, nobility, criminality, etc, and institutions can magnify or repress them. He has argued that the job of the left ought to be to fight the institutions that repress the good parts of our nature and advance the institutions that subdue our worst tendencies. This is different than the view that there is no human nature, and we can be moulded arbitrarily to any sort of institutional structure and accommodate ourselves to it - it says there is a peculiar spectrum of human tendencies, some positive, some negative, and we should end the institutions that are repressing the positive tendencies and amplifying the negative.
RedRobot Not at all. I just can't see anarchism moving forward without a substantial portion of the population becoming educated as to what it is, and why it should be the preferred model of society.
IDidactI Excellent points. I hadn't considered some of these.
IDidactI I began my ideological journey as a staunch conservative out of high school. Then, as a right libertarian as Ron Paul began his presidential bid. It wasn't until feeling the effects of capitalism time and again in a negative way that I began to question the validity of all that I believed. Furthermore, I poured hours and hours into research that many do not have the luxury of having. How unique is my story? How many people with little more than a high school diploma or GED (I have a GED) would attempt to do that? Since there isn't a scientific way in which to answer those questions, I'm left assuming that my story isn't very common. Which leads me to conclude that the indoctrination that I received throughout most of my life was so deeply embedded that, in order to reverse, required an effort only short of the miraculous. This can't bode well for a working population that would rather turn on the television than take the time to question two-party politics, and why their life isn't what they thought it would be.
Mike Echon, my own “journey” is similar to your own, though I think that the answer has never been (or will ever be) an idealogical one. I feel that the only difference in humans is a fundamental difference in perception. If a human experiences the entire universe as being part of himself, it would logically follow that such a person could not possibly harm others without experiencing the very pain/poverty he would be inflicting.
Seeing oneself as a fundamentally separate entity from the rest of the universe creates the “cushion” that allows exploitation, murder etc. without a pang of conscience.
All ideologies are attempts to wrap the universe into a thing that one can then “do something with” - as an object rather than as an intimate part of oneself.
But all this that I just described (experiencing the universe as part of oneself) will always be perceived on the intellectual level as an idea, and thus be just another ideology.
He caresses his hair upon uttering his hero Bakunin.
it sounds like Orwell's 1984 is inspired by this movement
Bakunin was genius and as well Chomsky is genius . We can not ear this in "free press"