For and against Chomsky

Is the world's top public intellectual a brilliant expositor of linguistics and the US's duplicitous foreign policy? Or a reflexive anti-American, cavalier with his sources?

by Robin Blackburn / November 20, 2005 / Leave a comment

For Chomsky Robin Blackburn celebrates a courageous truth-teller to power

The huge vote for Noam Chomsky as the world’s leading “public intellectual” should be no surprise at all. Who could match him for sheer intellectual achievement and political courage?

Very few transform an entire field of enquiry, as Chomsky has done in linguistics. Chomsky’s scientific work is still controversial, but his immense achievement is not in question, as may be easily confirmed by consulting the recent Cambridge Companion to Chomsky. He didn’t only transform linguistics in the 1950s and 1960s; he has remained in the forefront of controversy and research.

Chomsky Angel The huge admiration for Chomsky evident in Prospect’s poll is obviously not only, or even mainly, a response to intellectual achievement. Rather it goes to a brilliant thinker who is willing to step outside his study and devote himself to exposing the high crimes and misdemeanours of the most powerful country in the world and its complicity with venal and brutal rulers across four continents over half a century or more.

Some believe—as Paul Robinson, writing in the New York Times Book Review, once put it—that there is a “Chomsky problem.” On the one hand, he is the author of profound, though forbiddingly technical, contributions to linguistics. On the other, his political pronouncements are often “maddeningly simple-minded.”

In fact, it is not difficult to spot connections between the intellectual strategies Chomsky has adopted in science and in politics. Chomsky’s approach to syntax stressed the economy of explanation that could be achieved if similarities in the structure of human languages were seen as stemming from biologically rooted, innate capacities of the human mind, above all the recursive ability to generate an infinite number of statements from a finite set of words and symbols. Many modern critics of the radical academy are apt to bemoan its disregard for scientific method and evidence. This is not a reproach that can be aimed at Chomsky, who has pursued a naturalistic and reductionist standpoint in what he calls, in the title of his 1995 volume, The Minimalist Programme.

Chomsky’s political analyses also strive to keep it simple, but not at the expense of the evidence, which he can abundantly cite if challenged. But it is “maddening” none the less, just as the minimalist programme may be to some of his scientific colleagues. The apparent straightforwardness of Chomsky’s…

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Comments

Richard Matthews
April 2, 2010 at 17:12
After listening to Chomsky live in Portland, Oregon, and also reading both supportive and critical responses on this site and elsewhere, it remains the fate of The People to be once again totally confused. Is America the imperialistic power of Chomsky? Or is there actually a more benevolent movement beneath the motion? Power and money? Or power, money, and a good heart? Your Average Person in the Global Street may well never know. So, on with the day as usual.
nic kelly
April 22, 2010 at 18:14
God help us
Michael Walzer
June 21, 2010 at 14:46
It is really funny, how people still fall for the increasingly ridiculous cheap rhetoric of Chomsky. The man who vehemently refuses to observe even the minimum of scientific rigor and is so arrogant to claim that "the others" lack the education to understand "real arguments" is using anything but valid argumentation! For instance he "cleverly" points to the fact that a country's right to defend itself DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY imply the right TO USE FORCE to defend itself. While that hairsplitting rhetoric might emphasize some truth, it clearly skews the whole truth. First, that rhetoric fires back, since that also implies that those, who are the alleged target of what Chomsky calls "fascist aggression", have no right to use force themselves. Secondly, it also does not automatically mean that defending oneself precludes using force! That Chomsky mostly resorts to cheap rhetoric attempts to fool his audience is best proven by the fact that he incessantly uses the phrase "universally agreed upon" for propositions which are at best controversial.
swede
August 12, 2010 at 16:33
I believe there is an American imperialist agenda. Chomsky might be right in many things but credibility is chattered if quotations and facts is distorted. And he does have a confident answer on just about everything, that is in no normal mans ability. Young people can be in the impression that that the world and answers is simple, it's the youths privilege. And sometimes it is simple and it takes a young person, who ignores possible obstacles, to see things and break new ground. In fact many historical break troughs in science have been made in the scientist's young age. But that is not the rule. As it is said knowledge is like a sphere the more it grows the larger the surface to the unknown. So by age what was once simple get increasingly complex. I am always suspicions of people of mature age to whom the world remains simple and straight forward. But they easily became idols for young people. Chomsky knows exactly how America is run, the core of things in the Balkan conflict and everywhere. He knows about what is what in science. If he don’t know him self he have a MIT buddy in the field of science that have told him how it is. He have prompt answer about Danish mo cartoons, its sole Muslim bashing and not what so ever an issue of free speech. He knows because a European he knows has told him so. And yes it was a right wing newspaper, a normal local main stream bourgeoisie paper that covers local stuff, but there was actually also an actual issue of fear of actual threats and violence if one did say or published inappropriate about Mo and Islam that probably was the main cause of the publication. And now he is on global warming or climate change saying that 99% of scientists are confident of this stuff, the one percent is Rush Limbaugh and a couple of more of the same ilk. That is simply not true. And he has a manner of being very patronizing and belittling in his tone, he is always right and those who do not agree are stupid and ignorant.
Robin Bankel
January 17, 2011 at 05:55
I haven't read his books, but I will when I find the time. But I have been watching lots of interviews and debates with him where his opponents are trying to discredit him, but he always have a good and just answer. And all the sources that he has cited have been correct, despite taking beatings over them. Most of his political ideas are not from planet Chomsky but rather straight from the human rights reports and other reliable sources. People who are trying to discredit him and his sources often draw the conclusion of something related to what Chomsky has said instead of checking the correlation between the source and what he really says...
V.Ramachandra Reddy
July 27, 2011 at 14:27
Chomsky’s theories are not backed by solid empirical evidence: It appears that Chomsky proposes new theories without much empirical evidence. In his innateness theory, he said that children face poverty of stimulus. But there is no evidence to say that children actually face this problem. Unlike the minds of the adults, the minds of the children are not cluttered. An uncluttered mind can take more input and absorb it. This might be the reason behind the ability of the infants in internalizing their mother tongue at a rapid pace. Moreover language is not something which remains static. It keeps changing. It evolves constantly and continuously. So the question is how does this dynamic information get coded into the human genes? Many cognitive scientists who support innateness hypothesis claim that infants have LAD (Language Acquisition Device) in their brains. As a result of this they acquire the ability to speak the language by the time they are three years old, but they fail to read and write. But to what extent this argument is sensible is a matter of debate. It is a well known fact that children get exposed to auditory input of the language but they don’t have access to visual input of the language. If we expose the children to visual input like written text with appropriate and attractive illustrations, will they be able to read small sentences by the time they are three years old? This is a question which requires long term research and gathering empirical evidence.
Christopher Ward
July 2, 2012 at 14:12
Before the article has even begun, it is discredited. The term "anti-American" is juvenile.
Sam
August 5, 2012 at 22:18
In regards to his critiquing of Western power, Chomsky is a threat to the mainstream intelligentsia, he undermines and attacks their belief systems. The argument against him will never end, because for many, accepting his points involves slicing their own necks. Not that he is untouchable, but most of these arguments are clutching at straws.
goedelite
November 25, 2012 at 19:57
Though I share Noam Chomsky's anti-imperialism, I find in it an omission. I do not know how that lacuna may be filled. Perhaps he or other readers would have answers. If one rules out the sheer hunger for power as the primary motivation for imperialism, then one has to consider economic motives: the need for natural resources by industrial powers. Without such resources, production ebbs and wealth declines. Ordinary people are aware of this. If one is to win people to the anti-imperialist cause, then in addition to the arguments about the cost to them of militarism and wars answers to the question of how to continue a high standard of living without a reliable supply of petroleum and other commodities must be given. I don't think that Prof. Chomsky has supplied such answers. As a consequence, his anti-imperialism seems moral enough but lacking in persuasiveness. My only answer is: we have no choice: imperialism leads to the worst consequences, war, loss of liberties - even in the home of the empire - and eventual decline.
1. Alex
  April 7, 2017 at 17:54
  You are wrong that Chomsky hasn't supplied the answer to the problem of living standards. The answer is anarcho syndicalism. And don't let the term scare you; it's really pretty f'n simple...
Abdulai Walon-Jalloh
January 16, 2013 at 00:16
Prof. Chomsky the intellectual will always loom large in our lives but like every mortal his ideas are not bulwarks that cannot be challenged. Challenging his ideas has always enabled Prof. Chomsky to evolve stronger every time he shifts his position. If one were to look at his earliest language theories on syntax in the 1950s, Prof. Chomsky has always modified his views to suit current thinking: from phrase structure grammar to minimalist grammar. And he has been doing this for the better part of 60+ years. This in itself is a remarkable feat. His preoccupation with the United States has enabled the world to have a fresh perspective when critiquing the US involvement in global affairs: be it in the middle east or saving sick people across the Atlantic or battling the Taliban in Afghanistan. Prof. Chomsky might have his weaknesses but his insightful analyses have greatly revolutionarised the way we view languages today.
Peter Bachura
January 30, 2013 at 15:47
Please advise me. If you had to choose 3 books as Chomsky´s academic opposition / contradiction regarding his U.S. foreign policy suggestions and ideas- which publications would that be? I am about to write a Master´s Thesis about the U.S. foreign policy during the Bush Administration and your opinion would help me a lot. Many thanks, pbachura@gmail.com Peter Bachura
Joe Ruf
March 29, 2013 at 08:56
Hardly cheap rhetoric. I've spent many hours trying to dig something false on Chomsky and come up very short. I don't agree with all his conclusions but certainly it's worth checking out his sources. He has certainly fostered a discovery in many things I hadn't known previously and I've yet to meet anyone who has listened to him or read him who hasn't come away swayed on something.(for me it was his critique of education). The man is a moral force and an ocean of knowledge even if sometimes his conclusions, and himself, come off as old hippie... Also, with all due respect, it seems from your argument that you are one to split hairs.
Abdulai Walon-Jalloh
May 20, 2013 at 12:38
Peter, I would suggest you focus on the books suggested by Andrew above but that you should cast your net even wider by examining people's reactions to the critiques put forward by Chomsky.
goedelite
June 17, 2013 at 21:33
Though I have not explored Prof Chomsky's work in linguistics, I have read Bertrand Russell's, "On Denoting", written in the first decade of the last century. In it, Russell showed that a sentence taken by analysts to be meaningless is not. It is meaningful when meaning is derivative of the hidden syntax of the sentence rather than locked in the rigidity of the naive word grammar. How Chomsky's work departs from Russell's, I cannot say. On political matters, US foreign policy and domestic economic policy, I find myself in agreement with the "public intellectual" as he is respectfully called. Though, like others on the left, he does not deal with questions of implementation of a more just economic organization, I assume that is because this is largely unexplored terrain and must be approached in a trial and error manner. We have seen in the 20th century the tragic consequences of ideologically based economic and social organization in both fascism and Soviet socialism. The socialist organization was, at an early stage, taken over by thugs. The regimes we have now in the west have allowed the wedding of major world corporations with the state, as in fascism, but with the softening of what remains of social safety nets and the trappings of civil liberty. This is most clearly exemplified in the US, but it is also the case in Europe. Thus, it may be inferred that Chomsky does not offer a schema for implementation of justice in world relations, economic and political, because the problems are too complex and must be approached in a pragmatic way rather than in a theoretical way. That moral and ethical principles must be applied in guiding the pragmatism is not denied. Indeed, they are essentials.
noel
July 9, 2013 at 17:15
What a load of " cheap rhetoric" crap. You have no notion what you're talking about.
Charles Reiss
July 31, 2013 at 03:16
I think it is surprising how often Chomsky's work is characterized as non-empirical or even anti-empirical. My own view is that he has greatly enlarged the domain of empirical facts that linguists can consider as relevant. In our book, *I-Language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science* Daniela (Dana) Isac and I, using some very simple language data, try to explain the approach to language that Chomsky has developed. You might be surprised at what we consider the subject matter of linguistics to be--it has nothing to do with culture or communication. This, already, is guaranteed to alienate many people...
Aetzbar
January 21, 2016 at 16:23
For Chomsky http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Mans-Natural-Knowledge-ebook/dp/B019IAA1GU/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_img_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0K65X9BN4KHGF2B5YVGF