JTW's Politics & History - Author: Chomsky, Noam

Noam Chomsky

ON THE RESPONSIBILITY OF INTELLECTUALS

Noam Chomsky:

"With respect to the responsibilities of intellectuals...

Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyse actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.

In the Western world at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression.

For a privileged minority, Western democracy povides the leisure, the facilities and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology, and class interest through which the events of current history are presented to us.

The responsibilities of intellectuals, then, are much deeper than what Macdonald calls the 'responsibilities of peoples', given the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy."

Excerpted from:
Noam Chomsky - American Power and the New Mandarins

Noam Chomsky:

"It is the responsibilities of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.

This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass without comment. Not so, however. For the modern intellectual it is not at all obvious."

Excerpted from:
Noam Chomsky - American Power and the New Mandarins

In Regards to the Questioning of Intentions...

Noam Chomsky:

"He [Henry Kissinger] observed, rather sadly, that what disturbs him the most is that others question not our judgement [the Nixon Administrations in regards to the Vietnam War] but our motives

- a remarkable comment on the part of one whose professional concern is political analysis, that is, analysis of the actions of governments in terms of motives that are unexpressed in the official propaganda and perhaps only dimly perceived by those whose acts they govern.

No one would be disturbed by an analysis of the political behaviour of Russians, French, or Tanzanians questioning their motives and interpeting their actions in terms of long-range interests, perhaps well concealed behind official rhetoric.

But it is an article of faith that American motives are pure and not subject to analysis.

Although it is nothing new in American intellectual history - or, for that matter, in the general history of imperialist apologia - this innocence becomes increasingly distasteful as the power it serves grows more dominant in world affairs."."

Excerpted from:
Noam Chomsky - American Power and the New Mandarins

Excerpts From Noam Chomsky Interview with Michael Albert

Michael Albert:

"So supposing a society like ours does give some people the opportunity to spend more time doing intellectual work...

What's the responsibility of a person like that, a person who is free to have that time?"

Noam Chomsky:

"We can distinguish what we you might call their "task" from their moral responsibility.

Their task, that is, the reason why social institutions provide them with this time and effort, their task is, say, so that they can support power, authority, they can carry out doctrinal management.

They can try to ensure that others perceive the world in a way which is supportive of existing authority and privilege.

That's their task.

If they stop performing their task, they're likely to be deprived of the opportunities to dedicate themselves to intellectual work.

On the other hand, their moral responsibility is quite different, in fact, almost the opposite.

Their moral responsibility is to try to understand the truth, to try to work with others to come to an understanding of what the world is like, to try to convey that to other people, help them understand, and lay the basis for constructive action.

That's their responsibility.

But of course there is a conflict.

If you pursue the responsibility, you're likely to be denied the privileges of exercising the intellectual effort."

Excerpted from:
Z-Magazine Chomsky Archives

Concerning the Left "Liberal" Intellectuals...

Noam Chomsky:

"Rather I'm deploring the fact that while people who considered themselves left intellectuals 60 years ago were devoting themselves to the needs and interests of the great mass of the population (for example, by introducing them to modern science and mathematics), many of those who call themselves "left intellectuals" today prefer to feather their own nests while telling the general public that they should not pay attention to what human intelligence and creativity has achieved, but should leave all of this to the powerful and privileged and join the postmodernists in what (to me, at least) is incomprehensible jargon. All of this is a marvellous gift to power, and much to be deplored, in my opinion."

Excerpted from:
Z-Magazine Chomsky Archives

The "Few", The "Good", and The "Experts"...

Noam Chomsky:

"If the people are so "depraved and corrupt" as to "confer places of power and trust upon wicked and undeserving men, they forfeit their power in this behalf unto those that are good, though but a few."

The good and few may be the gentry or industrialists, or the vanguard Party and the Central Committee, or the intellectuals who qualify as "experts" because they articulate the consensus of the powerful (to paraphrase one of Henry Kissinger's insights).

They manage the business empires, idealogical instituitions, and political structures, or serve them at various levels.

Their task is to shepherd the bewildered herd and keep the giddy multitude in a state of implicit submission, and thus to bar the dread prospect of freedom and self-determination."

Excerpted from:
Noam Chomsky - Force and Opinion in Z Magazine, July/August 1991

Beware of Would-Be "Revolutionaries" and their Ambitions to Lead the "Ignorant"...

Noam Chomsky:

"The organization and the rule of society by socialist savants," [Bakunin] wrote, "is the worst of all despotic governments."

The leaders of the Communist party will proceed "to liberate [the people] in their own way," concentrating "all administrative power in their own strong hands, because the ignorant people are in need of a strong guardianship...

[the mass of the people will be] under the direct command of the state engineers, who will constitute the new privileged political-scientific class."

For the proletariat, the new regime "will, in reality, be nothing but a barracks" under the control of a Red bureaucracy.

But surely it is "heresy against common sense and historical experience" to believe the "a group of individuals, even the most intelligent and best-intentioned, would be capable of becoming the mind, the soul, the directing and unifying will of the revolutionary movement and the economic organization of the proletariate of all lands."

In fact, the "learned minority, which presumes to express the will of the people," will rule in "a pseudo-representative government" that will "serve to conceal the domination of the masses by a handful of privileged elite."...

Excerpted from:
Noam Chomsky - Leninism and State Capitalism From "Intellectuals and the State" (1977), published in Towards a New Cold War (1982)

You're Responsible for the Predictable Consequences of Your Actions...

Noam Chomsky:

The principle that I think we ought to follow is not the one that you stated, it's the principle we rightly expect Soviet dissidents to follow.

What principle do we expect Sakharov to follow, let's say?

What lets us decide whether Sakharov's a moral person?

I think he is.

Sakharov does not treat every atrocity as identical.

He has nothing to say about American atrocities.

When he's asked, he says I don't know anything about them, I don't care about them.

What he talks about are Soviet atrocities, and that's right.

Because those are the ones that he's responsible for.

You know, it's a very simple ethical point - you're responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.

You're not responsible for the predictable consequences of someone else's actions.

Now, we understand this when we're talking about dissidents in the Soviet Union but we refuse to understand it when we're talking about ourselves for very good reasons.

Commissars in the Soviet Union don't understand it about dissidents.

Commissars in the Soviet Union attack Sakharov and other dissidents because they don't talk about American crimes.

We understand exactly why that's just hypocrisy and cynicism when they do it and we should understand the same when we do it.

Now the fact of the matter is that I spend a fair amount of effort on crimes of official enemies.

There are a fair number of people in the United States and Canada, from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, who are there because of my personal activities on their behalf.

But I don't take any pride in that particularly, I just do it because I'm interested in it.

The most important thing, for me and for you, is to think about the consequences of your actions.

What can you affect?

Those are the ones you primarily ought to be concerned about. Of course every corpse is a corpse, but there are some you can affect and there are others you can't do much about.

You know, like I can be worried about things that happened in the eighteenth century but I can't do much about them.

• Chomsky, Noam
  • American Power and the New Mandarins
  • Pantheon Books
  • E 744.C514 1969

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