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1.0 out of 5 stars
Unreferenced claims and unreliable judgements, Aug 8 2002
This book comprises half a dozen extended interviews conducted in the mid-nineties with the polemicist Noam Chomsky by a radio producer, David Barsamian. Even admirers of Chomsky are likely to be dismayed by the lack of incisiveness of the questions. An interview does not have to be hostile or even argumentative to illuminate its subject's thinking, but Barsamian's questions and interjections go beyond mere sympathy with his subject's views. An example is "Are you looking forward to the summer at Wellfleet, on the Cape?" On receiving the answer "yes", Barsamian follows it up with, "And you get a little sailing and swimming in on the side?" (It turns out that Chomsky is agnostic on this supplementary question.) Lest I be accused of ill grace in subjecting pleasantries to criticism, I stress that these questions are representative of the tone of the book. Barsamian's typical formulation is not "a counterexample to your view would be X; how do you incorporate this into your explanation?" (as you would find in, say, Ramin Jahanbegloo's 'Conversations with Isaiah Berlin', or Didier Enribon's 'Looking for Answers: Conversations on Art and Science' conducted with Ernst Gombrich) but "what do you mean by Y?" This is not really interviewing at all, because the exchange goes one way only. No assertion or judgement of Chomsky's is challenged in the book, even as a device to draw out the complexities of a subject. In the first interview, for example, in denouncing the Reagan years, Chomsky declares - without offering any empirical evidence in favour of the proposition, let alone being asked for it - that since the 1980s there has been an "absolute reduction in standard of living for a majority of the population". In fact, there has been a steady increase in living standards in the US, in real as well as nominal terms, when you consider wages and salaries plus benefits (i.e. total compensation); the Council of Economic Advisors' annual 'Economic Report to the President' contains a handy table showing this measure as an index.Unfortunately, that particular factoid is by no means atypical of the book, which is generally unreliable in fact and interpretation. In the interview entitled 'Rollback', Chomsky complains that "The very fact that the concept 'anti-American' can exist - forget the way it's used - exhibits a totalitarian streak that's pretty dramatic." Think about that for a moment. Leave aside the consideration that the term 'anti-American' has a recognisable and precise meaning - reflexive and prejudiced opposition to anything and everything that the United States might do in order to preserve its interests, such as protecting her citizens from terrorism - and consider the cognitive aspect of Chomsky's remark. Surely, the reader will ask, Chomsky cannot be saying that merely thinking about an abstract quality is totalitarian; yet I cannot think of any other way to interpret this extraordinary remark, especially given that Chomsky explicitly enjoins us to ignore practical applications A diffuse interview follows on "History and Memory", a title that apparently alludes to what Chomsky can recall from some decades back. Evidently his recall is uncertain, for he states that "my impression is that the Nagasaki bomb was basically an experiment". Again, think about that. Chomsky is here going way beyond the thesis, long debunked, of Gar Alperovitz that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were intended as a political signal to deter the Soviet Union. He is claiming far more than the case expounded by revisionist historians that Harry Truman dropped the bomb without compelling military reason (though in fact the military arguments were strong and Truman's decision was eminently defensible to prevent mass killings of both Japanese civilians and American troops - see A.L. Hamby's biography of Truman, "Man of the People"). He is asserting that the US killed Japanese civilians on a whim. Chomsky states, as well he might, that "somebody ought to check this out, I'm not certain"; the critical reader might reasonably feel that to charge democratic leaders with crimes comparable to those of Josef Mengele but on a vaster scale requires a rather high degree of evidence. He will not find it here, and Chomsky allocates to others the task of assembling it. So it goes on, with allegations and claims surprising only for their passionate intensity rather than their predictable content. Chomsky denounces Elia Kazan for his truthful testimony against Communist subterfuge in the film industry, and hails Lillian Hellman, whose account of Communist resistance to Nazism, dramatised in the film "Julia", has been shown to be untruthful (see William Wright's biography, "Lillian Hellman: The Image, The Woman"). In an interview on the Federal Reserve, Chomsky declares that the US economy conforms to Keynes's well-known warning about a country's capital development becoming "the by-product of a casino". Chomsky has unfortunately misunderstood this passage of "The General Theory". Keynes was concerned specifically about the sources of fixed capital investment; yet in advanced capitalist economies such as the US and the UK, it is very rare for to companies to finance their fixed capital investment from the capital markets. (The single exception to this rule is investment in premises, where the scarcity of land places a lower limit on the capital losses that may be sustained by a company.) Rather, they almost invariably finance it from shareholders' reserves. In the final interview, Chomsky turns his attention to his prolonged campaign against Israel. He asserts that, owing to supposed Israeli aggrandisement, "the issue of two states [i.e. a Palestinian state alongside Israel] is dead". Well, indeed it is dead, but its death has nothing to do with Israeli policy, which at Camp David and Taba offered the Palestine Authority a state with Jerusalem as its capital. As the world knows, Yasser Arafat responded with a campaign of violence and demagoguery - which is why we are where we are. I am a charitable reviewer, but I am hard-pressed to find redeeming features of this book. It contains no references and scant substantiation for judgements that are at best questionable. I cannot recommend it.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Not a bad place to start with chomsky, Jan 24 2001
This is a series of interviews gien on alternative radio stations in the mid-90's. The subjects are common ones with Chomsky:power and its mis-uses. From the bungled CIA support in Afganistan,to deficit spending, a correct Reading of Adam smith, the family values tour and Newt Gingrich, Chomsky makes his point.I prefer his interviews because, frankly , I do not think he is a great writer. having read him while studying early childhood,this suprises me{he writes better scientificaly then politically}That being said, he remains the most vital ,important ,brilliant intellectual on our very thin landscape,and these interview are an excellent easy way to begin an introduction to the writings of Noam Chomsky.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Play it again, Sam, Sep 8 2000
Barsamian has apparently figured out a way to benefit both himself and Chomsky by publishing interviews with the ever wide-ranging scourge of American foreign policy. For long-time readers, not much new should be expected from a casual book like this; nor is there. If any sub-theme surfaces, it is Chomsky's deepening opposition to corporate America. The book is aptly titled. In fact it would be difficult to find denunciations of big business more unequivocal or forceful anywhere, even in Marxist literature.There is one interesting development that emerges in *Class Warfare*. Chomsky seems to be appreciating at last that some kind of woolly anarchistic sentiments are powerless against the concentrated power of international capital. In this book, he appears to take a liberal turn, looking to big government as a necessary counterweight. At the same time, however, he acknowledges that politicians and their cronies are under heavy corporate sway. Is there logical room for manuever here? Perhaps, that is, if government can be wrested away from the death grip of big business,i.e. the Ralph Nader solution. If I'm correct in the framing, the MIT professor is at a pivotal point in his political evolution. On one hand, he's all too aware of the magnitude of the international problem, on the other, he's reluctant to endorse any kind of authoritarian response that would clash with his deep regard for non-authoritarian structures. To perhaps oversimplify, which then does he value more: relief for the economically oppressed or decentralized decision procedures. As the struggle for global supremacy develops, the two may not be at all compatible. I think he has shown in his many books what US-corporate foreign policy has wrought. Now is a good time for this most humane of thinkers to tackle the pressing analytical questions of our time. Any work that includes Noam Chomsky's research is worth buying. No other series so unflinchingly opens the eyes to the crushing realities of America's actions abroad.
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