Intellectuals
By Noam Chomsky
Znet
30 August, 2003
D: Last year we
worked on a seminar, made by the students, called Genealogy of dominion.
We studied Max Stirner, Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, Etienne De
la Boetie and Hannah Arendt. I worked on Max Stirner, The Ego and Its
Own, he believes language has a disciplinary effect that through the
words goes straight to ideology. So for Stirner, you have to free yourself
from this kind of language and have a personal rebellion, not a revolution.
This is something different from your language conception that is free
and creative. I want to know what you think about that.
C: I think Stirner
is confusing language with the use of language. I mean it is like asking
whether you have to free yourself from a hammer because a hammer can
be used by a torturer. It is true that a hammer can be used by a torturer
but the hammer can be used also to build houses. The use of a hammer
is something we must pay attention to, but the language can be used
to repress, can be used to liberate, can be used to divert. It is like
saying you have to liberate yourself from hands because they can be
used to repress people but it's not hands' fault.
D: It is very hard to live in the U.S. for a left activist. I don't
feel very comfortable in your country. What is the condition of activism
in the U.S.?
C: The situation
is really complicated. There are no labor-based groups and there is
no labor based political party. People are completely disconnected and
this lack of connection is a real problem. Don't forget that the Marxist
movements were never very strong in U.S. in all of its history: there
were ambiences in which independent Marxists gained influence but this
didn't happen in the main part of the country. Also remember that the
U.S. government is an extreme radical and nationalist group with some
similarities to European Fascism. It has proclaimed "imperial ambitions"
relying on its overwhelming predominance in the military dimension,
and is unusual in its dedication to the needs of narrow sectors of wealth
and private power. People in the United States work really hard, much
harder than any other
advanced industrial society and this causes a lot of stress. People
are always concerned about their work and they live in fear. Although
there is a lot of crime in the United States, it is approximately the
same as comparable societies, but fear of crime is far higher. In many
ways, this is the most frightened nation in the world! Moreover, the
level of activism depends upon which part of the United States you are
thinking of: United States is a very complicated country with many different
tendencies. For example, last week I was in the largest university in
the country, which is not exactly the liberal centre of the nation:
Texas. In Houston and Austin, where I was, there were all kinds of community
and campus-based activities. At the University of Texas there were thousands
of people involved in protest after Congress authorized the use of force,
and the student government passed a strong anti-war resolution. One
finds similar things all over the country, at a level that is quite
without precedent. There has never been anything like such protest before
a war is officially launched, and war-peace issues are only one element
of the broad popular movements that are taking shape, committed to a
wide range of issues and concerns.
D: I was impressed
by the fact that everywhere, in shops, in bars, at the movies, there
is the same poster about 9-11 with the sentence, "We'll never forget".
In Europe, maybe we would have written something like, "We'll always
remember". It seems that there is a taste for revenge in your ad
C: You have all
sorts of different reactions, I mean, right after September 11, it was
reported that a big proportion, or a high majority, of the population
wanted the attack against Afghanistan. It's a normal feeling; now the
same majority would pursue diplomatic solution.
D: In a text of
yours you say that the world is ruled by a "virtual senate".
Can you tell me something more about this?
C:The term is not
mine. I am borrowing it from the professional literature on international
economics. The "virtual senate" consists of investors and
lenders. They can effectively decide social and economic policy by capital
flight, attacks on currency that undermine the economy, and other means
that have been provided by the neoliberal framework of the past 30 years.
You can see it in Brazil right now. The "virtual senate" wants
assurances that the neoliberal policies of the Cardoso government, from
which foreign investors and domestic elites greatly benefit, will not
be changed. As soon as international investors, lenders, banks, the
IMF, domestic wealth, and so on, recognized that Lula might win the
elections, they reacted with attacks on the currency, capital flight,
and other means to place the country in a stranglehold and prevent the
will of the majority from being implemented. When they regained confidence
that Lula would not be able to depart fundamentally from the international
neoliberal regime, they relaxed and welcomed him. As they put it, Lula
reassured people that he would keep Brazil safe. That specific use of
language has: two faces: if he keeps it safe for the financial investors,
will he keep it safe for the Brazilian? Governments face what economists
call a "dual constituency" : voters, and the virtual senate.
Lula promised his country that he will keep Brazil safe for the population,
but the IMF wants to keep it safe for the its own constituency: the
virtual senate. They will act so that the money comes right after the
elections and only if Lula keeps up with creditors. This is the effect
of financial liberalization and other measures that have established
the virtual senate as the dominant force in determining social and economic
policy within a country. It means the population doesn't have control
of the decisions taken by his own country. One consequence of liberalization
of capital is rather clear: it undercuts democracy.
D: This is a big
win for the left in the world; Brazil is such a big country.....
C: I have a lot
of respect for Lula but the problem is that he has very little space
to maneuver. Actually he has some choices: he can become some sort of
figurehead in the hand of IMF or he can do some good for Brazil. If
he doesn't get killed first...
D: We hope not...
C: Lula could direct
resources for internal development but unregulated capital flow can
be used very effectively to undermine attempts by individual governments
to introduce progressive measures. Any country trying to stimulate its
economy or increase its health spending is likely to find this deviant
behavior instantly punished by a flight of capital.
D: It seems to me,
with a certain degree of difference, that the concept of a virtual senate
is similar to Negri's and Hardt's concept of Empire.
C: Empire, yes,
but I have to say I found it hard to read. I understood only parts,
and what I understood seemed to me pretty well known and expressible
much more simply. However, maybe I missed something important.
D: Yes, and the
book arrives to the same conclusion as yours but through a more complicated,
less readable way...
C: If people get
something out of it, it's OK! What I understand seems to be pretty simple,
and this is not a criticism. I don't see any need to say in a complicated
way what you can say in an easier way. You can make things look complicated,
that's part of the game that intellectuals play; things must look complicated.
You might not be conscious about that, but it's a way of gaining prestige,
power and influence.
D: Do you look at
Foucault's work in this prospective?
C: Foucault is an
interesting case because I'm sure he honestly wants to undermine power
but I think with his writings he reinforced it. The only way to understand
Foucault is if you are a graduate student or you are attending a university
and have been trained in this particular style of discourse. That's
a way of guaranteeing, it might not be his purpose, but that's a way
of guaranteeing that intellectuals will have power, prestige and influence.
If something can be said simply say it simply, so that the carpenter
next door can understand you. Anything that is at all well understood
about human affairs is pretty simple. I find Foucault really interesting
but I remain skeptical of his mode of expression. I find that I have
to decode him, and after I have decoded him maybe I'm missing something.
I don't get the significance of what I am left with. I have never effectively
understood what he was talking about. I mean, when I try to take the
big words he uses and put them into words that I can understand and
use, it is difficult for me to accomplish this task It all strikes me
as overly convoluted and very abstract. But -what happens when you try
to skip down to real cases? The trouble with Foucault and with this
certain kind of theory arises when it tries to come down to earth. Really,
nobody was able to explain to me the importance of his work...
.
D: Do you think intellectuals should free themselves from theory, from
visions, such as Zapatistas, and Marcos?
C: Marcos' own thoughts
were interesting, but there is no such think as an "absence of
theory", I mean, you always have a commitment to some set of beliefs,
goals and visions and so on, or to some kind of analyses of society.
That is true whether you are expressing your views on torture, or freedom
of speech, or in fact any issue beyond the most utterly superficial.
D: I was thinking
of your text, Goals and Visions, and I think that sometimes it is much
more important to concentrate on goals and forget the visions
C: You don't have
to forget them; there is a balance. You have to make your own choices;
I mean close friend of mine may make very different choices than me.
For example Michael Albert thinks that is really important to spell
out the visions. My feeling is that we don't know how to do that, so
this kind of work is less important than that on goals. These are speculations
about reasonable priorities, doubtless different for different people,
as they should be. There is no general "right or wrong" about
it.
D: When you talk
about the role of intellectuals you say that the first duty is to concentrate
on your own country. Could you explain this assertion?
C: One of the most
elementary moral truisms is that you are responsible for the anticipated
consequences of your own actions. It is fine to talk about the crimes
of Genghis Khan, but there isn't much that you can do about them. If
Soviet intellectuals chose to devote their energies to crimes of the
US, which they could do nothing about, that is their business. We honor
those who recognized "that the first duty is to concentrate on
your own country." And it is interesting that no one ever asks
for an explanation, because in the case of official enemies, truisms
are indeed truisms. It is when truisms are applied to ourselves that
they become contentious, or even outrageous. But they remain truisms.
In fact, the truisms hold far more for us than they did for Soviet dissidents,
for the simple reason that we are in free societies, do not face repression,
and can have a substantial influence on government policy. So if we
adopt truisms, that is where we will focus most of our energy and commitment.
The explanation is even more obvious than in the case of official enemies.
Naturally, truisms are hated when applied to oneself. You can see it
dramatically in the case of terrorism. In fact one of the reasons why
I am considered public enemy number one among a large sector of intellectuals
in the US is that I mention that the U.S. is one of the major terrorist
states in the world and this assertion though plainly true, is unacceptable
for many intellectuals, including left-liberal intellectuals, because
if we faced such truths we could do something about the terrorist acts
for which we are responsible, accepting elementary moral responsibilities
instead of lauding ourselves for denouncing the crimes official enemies,
about which we can often do very little. Elementary honesty is often
uncomfortable, in personal life as well, and there are people who make
great efforts to evade it. For intellectuals, throughout history, it
has often come close to being their vocation. Intellectuals are commonly
integrated into dominant institutions. Their privilege and prestige
derives from adapting to the interests of power concentrations, often
taking a critical look but in very limited ways. For example, one may
criticize the war in Vietnam as a "mistake" that began with
"benign intentions." But it goes too far to say that the war
is not "a mistake" but was "fundamentally wrong and immoral"
- the position of about 70 percent of the public by the late 1960s,
persisting until today, but of only a margin of intellectuals. The same
is true of terrorism. In acceptable discourse, as can easily be demonstrated,
the term is used to refer to terrorist acts that THEY carry out against
US, not those that WE carry out against THEM. That is probably close
to a historical universal. And there are innumerable other examples.
Antasofia