Noam Chomsky (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004). Review by Ron Dart.
“Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty, and influence
of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual
alive.”
—The New York
Times
“Chomsky…is a major scholarly resource. Not to have read him
is to court genuine ignorance.”
—The Nation
“Even the dissidents speak as members of the empire.”
—John Newlove
Noam Chomsky emerged, in a published way and political
manner, in the 1960s, as an important critic of the American empire. The
publication of American Power and the New
Mandarins (1969) and At War with
Asia: Essays on Indochina (1969) established Chomsky as a leading critic of
American foreign policy. Chomsky’s collaboration and editing with Daniel
Ellsberg (and others) on ‘The Pentagon Papers’ in 1971 ushered Chomsky into even
greater prominence in the American political drama. The core and centre of
Chomsky’s argument has remained much the same in the last forty years. The USA
is an empire, and, as an empire, it has strategic interests in the global
village in which we live.
The interests of the empire are dominated by the few, and
these elite few are a combination of CEOs, politicians, media pundits and the
military. This power elite or military industrial complex does much to subvert
democracy and the interests of common people. Such a Mandarin class has little
or no interest in real liberty, democracy, equality or fraternity. It’s all
about power and control, wealth and security for the privileged few.
The publication of the paperback edition of Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for
Global Dominance continues to unpack, in meticulous and incisive detail,
the same themes and motifs. The times might change, but the script of the
larger drama remains the same. We live in a post 9-11 world, but pre or post
9-11, the aims and goals of the elite in the USA remainsunaltered. The tale of two cities goes ever on, world without end,
Amen.
Hegemony or Survival
is neatly divided into nine compact, well argued and succinct chapters: 1) Priorities and Prospects, 2) Imperial
Grand Strategy, 3) The New Era of Enlightenment, 4) Dangerous Times, 5) The
Iraq Connection, 6) Dilemmas of Dominance, 7) Cauldron of Animosities, 8)
Terrorism and Justice: Some Useful Truisms and 9) A Passing Nightmare. The
paperback edition has a follow up chapter that sticks to the same argumentative
path.
Chomsky makes it quite clear, in most of his books that deal
with American foreign policy, that the American state (whether it is ruled by
the democrats or republicans) has the same aim and goal: in reality to protect
the privileged few while rhetorically waving the flag of liberty, democracy,
equality and happiness. It is this persistent and unrelenting suspicion of the
state that should make Canadians somewhat suspicious of Chomsky.
Canada is not the USA, and when we genuflect to Americans
(whether the powerful or the dissidents) as our north star and political gurus,
are we not being yet further colonized? ‘Even dissidents speak as members of
the empire’, and when Canadians bow uncritically before Chomsky, they reflect
their colonial status. How can we, as Canadians, rightly so, see through the bloated
pretensions of the USA yet do so in a way that is not forever badmouthing the
state? When we slip into this anti-statist mode, we merely ape and echo
American models of being political radicals. Surely, the Canadian radical way
is much more balanced, sound and sane than the American anarchist way.
In Canada, our view of the state is much higher than in the
USA, and we do believe it is the role of the state (in principle and deed, in
domestic and foreign policy) to create and protect the common good. When
Canadians, anarchist and protest style, follow the lead of Chomsky, they just
might be undermining the very thing that can protect us against globalization
and the American empire.
There is no doubt that Noam Chomsky speaks much truth, and
speaks it in a blunt and clear manner. The hard facts cannot be denied, and Hegemony or Survival is vintage Chomsky.
But, what does such a book speak to Canadians? Yes, the USA is an empire, and
yes, the empire does do nasty and unjust things in the world. This cannot be
denied.
How, though, can such an empire be opposed, resisted or
challenged? There are voices like Chomsky who raise the troubling intellectual
inconsistencies between rhetoric and reality. But, if and when anarchism is
offered as the antidote and answer to the dishonesty of the state, the very
thing that can oppose an unjust state (another state) is undermined.
There is much good in Hegemony
or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, but, as a Canadian,
there comes a point when we must leave Chomsky behind and work with and through
the state to oppose the American empire and globalization, and through the use
of the state, create in the True North another path and way. This has always
been the best of the High Tory, Leftist and Liberal way in Canada. The beaver
will bite back.
A good corrective to Hegemony
or Survival, from a Canadian perspective, is Stephen Clarkson’s Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization,
Neoconservatism and the Canadian State(2002). Do sit on both eggs and see the different birds that
hatch.
For longer and more developed versions of this
argument see “Noam Chomsky and the Canadian Way: Anarchism or Nationalism?” and
“ Noam Chomsky Meets Robin Mathews: American Anarchism and Canadian
Nationalism” in www.vivelecanada.ca
rsd