Chomsky’s Bias – Capitalism, Media, and Democracy
I can sum up the point of this whole post in one sentence. If real democracy cannot exist without a free press then real capitalism cannot exist without the Internet.
A few years ago I paid $10 for access to an online discussion board frequented by Noam Chomsky and I asked him a question. “How has the Internet affected your understanding of the media?” His response was “I’m an innocent as far as the internet is concerned. I don’t even know what blogger.com is. Better raise the question with others.”
I haven’t tried to understand his work in linguistics but I think his analysis of the media is brilliant. He is a mesmerizing speaker but I was always disturbed by his notion that capitalism is fundamentally flawed. In “Manufacturing Consent” he talks about a requirement of rational central planning as an alternative to the evils of capitalism.
Here’s what I think was going through his head. He buried himself in the study of media and realized the disastrous consequences of communication monopolies when applied to democracy. Those media monopolies were allowed by capitalism which may explain his fear and loathing. And he was absolutely right at that time. His mistake was failing to predict how fast the Internet would break down the system as it existed when he wrote “Manufacturing Consent”. You get the sense that he assumes alternative media will always be crushed due to the inefficiencies and corruption associated with capitalism. Howard Dean and Ron Paul are living proof that the Internet is starting to allow the spread of previously taboo political beliefs.
Chomsky gets communication. He doesn’t get technology (as evidenced by his reply to my question) and based on his insistence upon “rational central planning” as a way forward it looks like he also doesn’t really understand economics or at least the power of emergent order, which is a bit strange considering his love of democracy. My plan is to bump into him some day so I can ask these questions.
It’s easy to say this and that about Chomsky, but don’t try to jab at him and claim you know what he does and doesn’t understand. Chomsky is ridiculously intelligent so I would question your assertion that he doesn’t “really understand economics.” Nonetheless, if he did say that he doesn’t know anything about the internet, that is pretty damn ignorant. Jesus, the internet has changed everything, I can’t imagine though that this is entirely accurate. That said, mnfg consent is an old book so you can’t have expected him to predict or even consider some sort of alternative media comparable to the internet, which only really exploded in like what ‘96?
Chomsky specifically advocates anarchosyndicalism which definitely involves rational central planning, but don’t caricature his views into just that– they’re not that simple.
Comment by Danny Vega — December 3, 2007 @
You’re right, I was surprised to hear his take on the Internet as well. I’m not saying Chomsky isn’t smart but my reading of Hayek leads me to believe that intelligence makes you more likely to incorrectly believe that central planning is workable. The guy is a genius but human brains, even his, are unable to effectively compete with the emergent intelligence of the less witty masses.
Oh and I don’t see anything wrong with questioning his theories. In fact he encourages it.
Comment by Kirk — December 3, 2007 @
Dr. Naom had been a creature of an particularly high and remote ivory tower that even few academes could hope to fathom. Whereas there are many areas of endeavor that compel one, despite one’s wish to the contrary, to be engaged in blogging and social media crapola (like me), there are fewer professions where you can ignore it altogether; Chomsky might be one of an aging few that have attained the rank of not having to know the tubes.
Comment by Alan Wilensky — December 6, 2007 @
The internets aren’t immune to censorship anymore than the media is. There is only a different means of control, and there is a big struggle for that control. Don’t get too complacent in your understanding of the internet just because you can point and click or write a few blogs. These things do not make you savvy.
The most easily observed threat to freedom of speech on the nets come in three forms.
1) Intellectual Property Rights: If it was said in a newscast, you can’t post it on the nets because it is the property of the media company that produced it. When file LIBRARIES came under fire for “reproducing media” that was copyright protected we lost a huge chance at real freedom of information. It was couched in terms of artists getting paid for their work, but the real threat was completely different. Being able to research any subject at the click of a mouse, to look up any reference of any book, or read the entire text of that book, watch video records of events, press reports and compare them with what other sources say across the world is a direct threat to the 1% of our population which controls 90% of the worlds resources. You don’t want people asking questions about how the very wealthy gained a 600% increase in yearly worth while most of the world slid into poverty.
2) Disinformation- The sheer weight of worthless diatribes and regurgitated propaganda and cross talk from thousands of splinter political organizations all dumping claims from sheer fantasy to convincing, yet distorted argument makes the task of finding any real information difficult. I would be more wary of any form of control over this, however, which is what the sheer weight of disinformation may help bring. Regulation on the internet has been tried several times in several different ways, from taxes on downloads to charging special fees for access. Not only has government tried to regulate the internets, so have many corporations, without much success. What they will need is a 9/11 -esque pretext before they can get people to calmly agree to regulation of the nets, and the piling garbage of disinformation may be the annoyance that causes people to caputulate with the right spin.
3) Which leads me to the third step. So far, most attempts at controlling the net have been to charge the end user. However the control of the non-internet media has classically risen from it’s cost to produce and spread a certain message. The higher the cost, the more easily the content of the media in question can be controlled. Right now it only costs whatever fees your ISP charge to access the internet. You can find several free services to post whatever information or artistic work you like. If legislation were to restrict the UPLOADING of information on the net by making it costly to do so, then the internet will become the tool of the wealthy.
I’m not at all surprised to hear Chomsky say that he’s just not qualified to speak on the issue of the internet. Just because someone is intelligent doesn’t mean they know everything. Noam Chomsky has dedicated the majority of his life to political activism, and in that as well as linguistics, he is very well versed. At the end of the day, though, we all only get 24 hours in a day to do what we will with it. No one can know everything. You’d be surprised at how ignorant modern people are on matters that most “primitive” people were well versed in. What a person knows has more to do with their need, interest and culture than their intelligence.
Comment by Xs Andree — March 11, 2009 @
i might add that he does advocate rational central planning – through democracy. anarchosyndicalism basically advocates that factories be run by workers’ councils. so the workers get together and debate and vote on whether to increase production, etc. that’s central planning all right, but to say ‘rational central planning’ without including the democratic component that chomsky always assumes should be there is to unfairly imply (whether intentionally or not) that chomsky wants some kind of leninist/stalinist state, which is the farthest thing from the truth.
Comment by andrew lee — March 21, 2009 @