“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
“Robin Mathews is a fighter poet, aggressive in his defense
of human rights, expressing his nationalist vision with enough feeling to slash
like a razor.”
—Montreal Gazette
“Mathews sees himself—accurately I think—as helping us gain
an independent sense of ourselves. The result is poetry for lots of people to
read, not poetry only for poets.”
—Books in Canada
Both Noam Chomsky and Robin Mathews emerged in a public and
published way in the late 1960s as political writers. Both men had been active
in the 1960s, but their activism began to take wings and leave the presses and
publishing houses and homes in 1968 and 1969. When Chomsky’s American Power and the New Mandarins and
At War With Asia: Essays on Indochina
were published in 1968 and 1969, he emerged as a dominant critic of American
foreign policy. When Mathews’/Steele’s The
Struggle for Canadian Universities and Mathews’ This Cold Fist was published in 1969, he became a significant actor
on the stage of Canadian political, educational and literary life. Chomsky and
Mathews have, since the 1960s, continued to play a substantive and prophetic
like role in both the USA and Canada. And yet, if many Canadians were asked if
they had heard of Chomsky, the answer would be a resounding Yes. If many
Canadians were asked if they had heard of Mathews, a rather quizzical look
would appear. Why is this the case?
Many bookstores in Canada carry many of Chomsky’s books, and
Chomsky is taught in many Canadian university classes. It is a rare bookstore
in Canada that carries any of Mathews’ books, and few students at Canadian
universities have heard of Mathews. Why is this so? Why is it that Canadians
know more about American political activists and writers than they do about
some of the more important Canadian activists and writers? What is it about the Canadian publishing ethos that bows
deep and low to American anarchists yet keeps Canadian nationalists far from
the public attention and limelight?
Both Noam Chomsky and Robin Mathews have spent much of their
academic and public lives exposing the questionable rhetoric of the American
empire. Both have seen Leviathan for what it is, and told all who would hear
that the emperor and the empire has no clothes on. Chomsky has used the
political principles of the empire to point out the chasm between rhetoric and
reality. Chomsky has defended liberty, individualism, conscience and equality
to one and all. He, in many ways, sees himself as the true patriot and defender
of the American founding principles. Mathews has, like Chomsky, walked the
extra mile to clarify and point out that the American empire has a predictable
tendency to act a like a predator and bird of prey. Mathews, unlike Chomsky,
has pointed out how many Canadians have been taken in by both American
principles and American Imperial ambitions, and, as such, have acted as dutiful
colonials and compradors.
Chomsky has been a consistent critic of the state, and, as
an anarchist has, much of his life, argued that society rather than the state
is the best and finest way to bring in the good community. Chomsky has been
most suspicious of the power that is invested in the state, and he has spent
most of his days pointing out how such power is abused and misused.
Chomsky has become a guru and mentor of sorts to the
anarchist and protest left in both the USA and Canada. Many Canadians, who see
themselves as radical, readily genuflect to Chomsky, and, in doing so, fail to
see how they are welcoming a more subtle form of the empire into their midst.
Mathews started a nationalist party in Canada (before Mel Hurtig), and he is a
firm believer in the role of the state as a means of bringing into being the
just society. Why do so many Canadians follow the cynical path of Chomsky and
his view of the state, and fail to heed and hear the insights of Mathews when
he urges Canadians to engage the state at the level of political parties? The
liberty loving individualism of Chomsky and clan has, buried at its centre, a
worrisome cynicism and skepticism. It is this cynicism that creates political
paralysis at the level of formal party politics. Do Canadians truly want to
hike down this dubious path? Is indifference and apathy in regard to formal
party politics the wisest and sanest way to go? What are the limitations of
anarchist and advocacy politics and what are some of the positives of the
state? Until these sort of probes are sent out, we will be in danger of
slipping into a comic book way of seeing and doing politics. Who, as Canadians,
should we heed and hear? Chomsky or Mathews? Mathews or Chomsky? And, what does it
say about us as Canadians when we turn to Chomsky to teach us how to be
political?
There is no doubt that moral outrage, protest and advocacy
politics have their place, but when formal political parties (and their role in
guiding the ship of state) is seen only in a negative way, the very goal the
idealists so long to attain are undercut and undermined. Mathews has never pitted society against the state in quite
the same way Chomsky and many anarchists have. In fact, Mathews has argued, quite convincingly, in both Canadian Identity: Major Forces
Shaping the Life of a People (1988) and The
Canadian Intellectual Tradition (1997) that the delicate Canadian dialectic
holds together both the role of the individual and community, and the society
and the state. The individual and society can go astray and slip into
individualism and splinter groups just as the state and community can slip into
collectivism and the abuse of power. But, both society and the state, the
individual and community can also do much good. Those who only concentrate on
the negative role and function of the state distort social reality. Much good
is brought about by the state, and, in Canada, as privatization and
globalization continues to make insidious inroads, the only way to restore a
shared and national sense of the common good is through a strong state. Those
who perpetually badmouth and take shots at the state might just sink or cripple
the very ship that can take them from one shore to another.
Mathews would agree with Chomsky that the American empire is
an empire, and, as such, does need to be exposed for all its brutal deeds in
various parts of the world. Mathews would, though, questions some of the
American principles that Chomsky holds so near and dear. Mathews would ask
Canadians why they are so keen and eager to embrace such principles when, in
Canada, we hold high such notions as the common good and the positive role of
the state in bringing about such a good.
The Canadian tradition has often held order in tension with
liberty, the commonweal in tension with individualism, the organic nature of
society with equality, tradition with conscience and the role of the state and
society in bringing into being the True North. When we, as Canadians, snap the tension and turn to the
reactive and reactionary American way as our north star, we become obedient
colonials of the empire. Mathews has made this process quite clear in his
challenging and razor sharp missives, Treason
of the Intellectuals: English Canada in the Post-Modern World (1995) and Being Canadian In Dirty Imperialist
Times (2000).
Treason of the
Intellectuals is divided into five compact and challenging chapters. The ‘Introduction’ lays bare the problem
many Canadian face in an all too frequent way. Most of our intellectual class
has betrayed the Canadian way again and again. This comprador class, with its
commitments to the USA, anarchism, or its firstborn child, postmodernism, has
no sense of any common heritage, identity or nationhood. The underlying
principles that shape and guide these prejudices are extreme notions of
individualism, liberty and equality (all part of the American genetic code).
What is fact seems to be a form of dissidence and radicalism is, if fact, a
deeper and more worrisome attitude of Canadian capitulation to American
founding principles and priorities. Chapter 1, ‘Political Lies, Canadian
Cultural History and the Post-Modern’ takes a surgical knife to the deceptions
of much of cultural history and the postmodern way that can only fragment,
divide and separate. Mathews has little interest in such an intellectual way of
seeing things, and he blows the Ram’s Horn on the failures and futility of the
postmodern project and ideology. Chapter 2, ‘Regionalism; Imperialism in a
Small Pond’ continues the assault on the shaky and dubious foundations of the
postmodern way. The turn, in Canada, to regionalism, Mathews argues, is a turn
away from the larger vision of what Canada might and could be. Mathews is very
much a poet and thinker of the large picture, of the epic vision, of the
Canadian metanarrative. He has little patience for those who hide away in ever
smaller and smaller views of what the common good might and could be if we had
but the fullness of mind to see what we share in common.
Chapter 3, ‘Iago in the Colony’ turns to many Canadians who,
like Iago, are driven by resentment and have no sense of Canada as being more
than a colony to serve imperial interests and ambitions. Chapter 4, ‘The New
Treason of the Intellectuals in English Canada’ pulls no punches and refuses to
capitulate. Our intellectual class has, again and again, betrayed us, and
Mathews walks the extra mile to identify who such intellectuals are and how
this betrayal process works (in crude, subtle and sophisticated ways). Treason of the Intellectuals is a must
read for any Canadian who has lost their national way and realizes the
implications of such a lostness. There is, in short, a way out of the dark,
deep forest where light is thin and shadows many. It is to such clearings that
Mathews points.
Being Canadian in
Dirty Imperialist Times is a poetic manifesto that just will not quit. Mathews probes, in poem after poem, how Canadians are
colonized, how Americans mesmerize and take captive the Canadian mind and
imagination and what Canadians can do to resist the empire in its multifaceted
ways of taken captive the Canadian ethos. Being
Canadian in Dirty Imperialist Times draws together many of Mathews’ earlier
poems and adds a few new ones. The tract for the times is both a poetic magna
charta and a historical overview of the Canadian journey. The initial poem,
‘Pre-history lesson’ sets the stage for the drama that is about to unfold, and
the final poem, ‘Marina: Saturna Island’ brings the book to a fitting
conclusion. Many is the poem between these two bookend poems that explore and
unpack the way Americans just assume they have a right to shape and assimilate
the Canadian way. The language Mathews uses is accessible, for and to the
people and spoken in such a way that Canadians can see themselves caught in the
dilemma they are in. The missive is thick with struggle and hope, critical of
the empire (like Chomsky), yet capable of speaking with a Canadian voice (unlike
Chomsky).
The publication of Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (2003)
tells much the same sort of tale that Chomsky has been telling for the last
four decades. The USA is an empire, and, as an empire, it seeks to dominate the
globe. Chomsky’s approach tends to be straightforward and stays on the same
goat trail again and again. It is one thing, though, to expose the pretensions
and violence of the USA. It is quite another thing to sort and sift through how
Canadians are to respond to such a quest for global dominance. Chomsky does not
know the Canadian tradition (most Americans suffer from the same problem), he
has no real solutions for Canadians (most Americans don’t), and he has no real
solution to the American empire (beyond a sort of thoughtful and probing
anarchist solution). Why then do Canadians turn so dutifully to an American who
knows little about the Canadian way? Why, in short, do so many turn to Chomsky
and so few Canadians turn to Mathews?
Mathews has, in a variety of ways, been faithful and true to
the Canadian nationalist tradition, but many is the Canadian dissident or
self-perceived radical that knows little about Mathews’ yeoman’s service in and
for Canadians since the 1950s. It seems to me that if Canadians are ever going
to get a serious and substantive sense of their own unique and vivid tradition.
Those who think that protest and advocacy politics can bring down the American
empire or resist and oppose the forward march and juggernaut of globalization
are sort sighted and naïve. Canadians who bow and genuflect to Chomsky and the
American anarchist way might just be paving the way for the weakening of the
state and the undermining of such Canadian institutions as health care,
education, the CBC, employment insurance and pensions. Those who turn to
Mathews (and his more nationalist vision) might be the true radicals who are in
the forefront of offering a serious and substantive challenge to the USA and
globalization in a way that can, through national and institutional means,
oppose such Goliaths in our time.
Should we, as Canadians, turn more to the American liberal
and anarchist way of Chomsky (and his followers, kith and kin) as our north
star? If so, are we just not perpetuating and deepening our colonial way of
being? Or, should we, as Canadians, gaze deeper into our communal and
collective tradition and see, in such a way of being, that we need not follow
the American lead into the future. The choice, as ever, is ours:
Anarchism (and its underlying principles of liberty,
individuality, equality, anti-statism, conscience and a suspicion of the past)
or Nationalism (and its underlying principles of order, the common good,
justice and a respect for tradition and the state). Canadians have, in their
history, lived with the dialectic and tensions of liberty/order,
individuality/commonweal, equality/ justice, society/ state and a respect for
the accumulated wisdom of tradition and history. There are many ways Canadians
have been and continue to be colonized. Those who uncritically bow to Chomsky
perpetuate this worrisome process. Those who have taken the time to heed and
hear Mathews might just see an old way, a way that is much older and nuanced
than the American way, a way that is truly Canadian, a way that upholds and
seeks to defend the best of the True North strong and free. It is by turning
our ears to such a way that we truly might be able both expose the follies and
pretensions, in thought, of the USA and globalization and, in deed, support the
Canadian institutions that can fight the good fight and stay the course of
opposition to such large and imposing forces. Canadians have done such things
in the past. There is no reason we cannot do such things in the present and
future.
rsd