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Analysis The Coercive Anarchism of Noam Chomsky by Barry Loberfeld The world famous
philosopher's "anarchism" ultimately amounts to its very
opposite.
An essay on radical behaviorist B.F.
Skinner was the last thing I expected to encounter when I picked up Noam
Chomsky's classic political tract "For Reasons of State." However, I soon
recognized the value of this piece, which I found notable for its presentation of
the MIT linguist's own notions of freedom and dignity — and what constitutes
their negation.1
| | Barry
Loberfeld is a freelance writer in Long Island.
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For me, Skinnerian behaviorism has long been a dead issue because Skinner's
concept of control requires an impossible definition of freedom. What would
constitute for Skinner an entity with free will, a being whose behavior is
governed by what's "inside the skin," not by its environment? At first, I thought
only a wind-up toy would qualify. But I soon realized that even this fails to
meet his standard: the toy is not "free" to walk forward if a wall blocks its
way; its behavior too is determined by its environment. To Skinner, interaction
with an environment is "control" by that environment. "Freedom" can only be
behavior that occurs apart from any environment — i.e., apart from
reality.
One of Chomsky's many telling criticisms of Skinner relates to this point:
"The libertarian whom [Skinner] condemns distinguishes between persuasion and
certain forms of control. He advocates persuasion and objects to coercion. In
response, Skinner claims that persuasion is itself . . . [a] form of control."
Well put, Professor. This libertarian wholeheartedly agrees, which is why I was
shocked to see Chomsky later put forth a theory of behavior that itself confuses
persuasion with coercion:
"The most obvious form of control . . . is differential wages. . . . Since the
industrial revolution, [socialism] has been much concerned with the problems of
'wage slavery' and the 'benign' forms of control that rely on deprivation and
reward rather than direct punishment." And: "There is, of course, no doubt that
behavior can be controlled, for example, by threat of violence or a pattern of
deprivation and reward. . . . Sanctions backed by force restrict freedom, as does
differential reward. . . . [I]t would be absurd . . . to overlook [as does
Skinner] the distinction between a person who chooses to conform in the face of
threat, or force, or deprivation and differential reward and a person who
'chooses' to obey Newtonian principles as he falls from a high tower."
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| Chomsky believes that
economic persuasion is not persuasion but "control," and those subject to it are
not free. |
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In a passage from "Beyond Freedom and Dignity," Skinner says much the same
thing: "Productive labor, for example, was once the result of punishment: the
slave worked to avoid the consequences of not working. Wages exemplify a
different [approach]: a person is paid when he behaves in a given way so that he
will continue to behave in that way" (p. 30, which, no, Chomsky doesn't quote).
Both Skinner and Chomsky believe the same thing, that economic persuasion is not
persuasion but "control" — coercion — and those subject to it are not
free. Whereas the traditional taskmaster beat those who did not obey orders
(force), today's marketplace employer simply fires them ("deprivation") —
or, if they do obey, pays them ("reward"). Capitalism controls all behavior by
matching different behaviors with different wages ("differential reward"), with
zero being the wage for some behaviors (again, "deprivation").
Susan Lopez wants to be a singer like her idol, Jennifer Lopez. However, she
is not free to be one. She isn't thrashed when she opens her mouth. It's
just that no one (including Professor Chomsky) will pay her to sing; she is
"free" to sing only to the extent that she is "free" to starve. Consequently, she
has no choice but to work at the only job for which people will pay her —
collecting bedpans at the retirement home. This is not what she wants to do at
all, and she would prefer at the very least to work only part-time, but that
means the loss of her medical benefits. For Chomsky, Susan Lopez is not free
— free to be "able to do as one pleases," which is the "natural goal" of a
"decent society," one in which all the Susan Lopezes will have the same freedom
as "those fortunate few [e.g., Jennifer Lopez] who can choose their own work
generally do today." And, as Providence would have it, the professor knows
exactly what will take us to this Promised Land: the redesign of our culture to
approximate the "socialist dictum, 'From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs.'" The first part will eliminate "reward," the second
"deprivation."
His program for clause one is quite simple:
stop paying people to work. No wages, no "wage slavery." Chomsky doesn't tell us
who will accomplish this or how. He is skeptical, even scornful, of the
suggestion that people work for "extrinsic reward," be it money or "prestige [or]
respect," and won't work (i.e., will "vegetate," in his characterization) without
it. The "decent society" will have "no shortage of scientists, engineers,
surgeons, artists, craftsmen, teachers, and so on, simply because such work is
intrinsically rewarding."2 Any
intimation that "history and experience" might cast doubt on this is dismissed as
having "the same status as an eighteenth-century argument to the effect that
capitalist democracy is impossible."3
He insists that "from the lessons of history we can reach only the most tentative
conclusions about basic human tendencies" at one (anti-empirical) moment, only to
insist elsewhere that "[w]e also find . . . that many people often do not act
solely, or even primarily, so as to achieve material gain, or even so as to
maximize applause." Exactly where we find these "many people," the professor,
renowned for his copious footnotes, provides not even a clue. My own impression,
if I may borrow Chomsky's words against Skinner, is that "the claims are becoming
more extreme and more strident as the inability to support them and the reasons
for this failure become increasingly obvious."
Chomsky writes, "interesting and socially useful work is . .
. rewarding in itself." Socially useful — determined how and by whom, absent
the mechanism of supply and demand? "Were we to rank occupations by social
utility in some manner" — what manner? The answer comes in the form of a
question: "Is it obvious that an accountant helping a corporation to cut its tax
bill is doing work of greater social value than a musician, riveter, baker, truck
driver, or lumberjack?" It is, if "social value" denotes how everyone allocates
his personal resources. That's why the accountant earns far less than Jennifer
Lopez but far more than Susan Lopez.4
But the professor uses the term "social value" to denote how he would
allocate everyone else's resources. What emerges is another implicit "dictum":
from each according to his own judgment, to all according to Chomsky's. This is a
clear (though unacknowledged) echo of Skinner's behaviorist tenet that "the
control of the population as a whole must be delegated to specialists."
| Chomsky's program is
quite simple: stop paying people to work. No wages, no "wage slavery."
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And how can Chomsky guarantee that the jobs that are "socially useful" (e.g.,
bedpan collection) will be the same that people (e.g., Susan Lopez) find
"interesting"? He can't, which is why we're informed that in this "decent
society, socially necessary and unpleasant work would be divided on some
egalitarian basis." But the obligatory mention about "egalitarian basis" tells us
only how people will ideally do the work; it doesn't tell us why
they'll do it. Since the work is not "interesting," it cannot be "rewarding in
itself." That leaves only two alternative motivations: the button of "direct
punishment" or the switch of "deprivation and reward." A self-professed
"libertarian and humanist" who seeks to guide and free us from any manifestation
of "authoritarian rule," Chomsky himself can find only sundry "forms of control"
blocking all the exits.
For most socialists, people are selfish creatures who wouldn't even give you a
smile unless you paid them and wouldn't toss a penny to the poor unless you
forced them. But for Chomsky, people are selfless souls who are content to work
for work's sake and are more than delighted to have the fruits of their labor
given to others. These one-dimensional models of motivation simply ignore the way
that many different and complex members of humanity are able to speak for
themselves in the forum of the market, where each names his price and others take
it or leave it. Of course, this is the very "wage slavery" Chomsky denounces.
What about the second clause — "to each according to his needs" —
the other half of the moral formula to free us from such "slavery"? Here Chomsky
provides no argument at all. He has nothing to say about the sort of practical
policies that would be needed to implement this principle (and thus eradicate
"deprivation"). Apparently, if any sense at all is to be made of this, we must
make it ourselves.
One way that is sometimes suggested is a guaranteed income or a ration of
basic necessities. In contrast to the free-market, the free-lunch frees Susan
Lopez to sing full-time without starving. Leaving aside the question of how the
government of the "decent society" will acquire the wealth for this distribution,
does this distribution satisfy Chomsky's standard of freedom? Here "history and
experience" offer two answers: socialist dictatorship and social democracy. The
first is easily disposed of: Noam Chomsky himself would be the last person in the
Free World not to concede that Communist governments, in their monopolization of
all resources, employ "deprivation and reward" as a means of exacting obedience
from their subjects.
But what about a social democracy, which, as a matter of "positive rights,
simply gives people what they need, no questions — or obligations —
asked? A decisive no comes from 1971's "Regulating the Poor," edited by
Francis F. Piven and Richard A. Cloward, which concludes that welfare programs
arise "from the need to stem political disorder during periods of mass
unemployment, and to enforce low-wage work during periods of economic and
political stability. The institution of relief is thus best understood, not as
charity, but as a system for regulating the poor." So, "when the destitute become
disorderly and tumultuous, often on a scale which threatens political stability,"
the amount of a welfare payment is raised in order to quiet them down ("reward").
"Once turbulance subsides," the amount of a payment is lowered to sub-wage levels
("deprivation") and the poor "are forced off the relief rolls and into the
low-wage labor pool." Yes, "wage slavery"!
The only remaining political option is anarcho-syndicalism,
so it's hardly surprising that this approach is so closely associated with
Chomsky.5
| Either Smith gives
something — food, clothing, medicine, money, acknowledgment, friendship,
consent, cooperation, approval, sex, love — to Jones ("reward") or he
doesn't ("deprivation"). What isn't either "deprivation" or "reward"?
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Here we must run our own Gedanken experiment. Let us imagine that there are no
ethical or economic problems in a situation in which the kids who were hired at a
Big Burger outlet Monday take over the store Tuesday. They kick out the manager
and break all ties with the corporate home office, and no police intervene to
protect property rights. Having truly seized the means of production from the
bosses, these workers have at last freed themselves from "wage slavery" and the
concomitant "deprivation and reward." Or have they? The fact is, they
still must arrive for work on time, look presentable, keep the place
clean, cook the right food the right way, and be courteous, or else they won't
get paid — by the only real boss: the sovereign consumer, who pays (or
doesn't pay) the salaries of all the employees of Big Burger, from its CEO to the
guy working the fryer.
Fundamentally, either Smith gives something —
food, clothing, medicine, money, acknowledgment, friendship, consent,
cooperation, approval, sex, love — to Jones ("reward") or he doesn't
("deprivation"). What isn't either "deprivation" or "reward"? Chomsky's terms
cover (and condemn) all of the give-and-take inherent in human interaction —
"a handy explanation for any eventuality." That's what he says of Skinner's
theory, and it's especially appropriate to quote it, since his own terms are, too
obviously, merely commonplace synonyms for Skinner's technological-sounding
"negative reinforcement" and "positive reinforcement."6 And, like Skinner's, Chomsky's contention that we
are "controlled" by this either-or, "given the vacuity of the system . . . can
never be proved wrong."
But just who's enslaving whom in "wage slavery"? Am I the
consumer controlling the kid behind the counter through "deprivation" by
withholding my money if he doesn't "take my order"? Or is he controlling me
through "deprivation" by withholding the burger (which I need for food) if I
don't obey his demand for a specific sum of money (for which I had to work)? Is
my physician coercing me into working (for wages) by denying me medical care if I
don't pay him, or am I coercing him into working (as a physician) by denying him
money (for food, clothing, etc.) if he doesn't treat me? The very logic of "wage
slavery" casts each man as both slave and master.7 I am reminded at this point of the wonderful
cartoon that has one mouse in the Skinner box saying to the other, "Have I got
this guy trained! All I have to do is press on this bar and he gives me
food."
The Chains That Bind Us All
How could it be otherwise? Freedom, for Chomsky, could only
be behavior that occurs apart from any social environment — i.e.,
apart from one's fellow human beings, whose every response to one's every action
constitutes either "deprivation" or "reward." To free oneself from Chomsky's
"slavery," one must live apart from society and provide his own food, shelter,
medical care, companionship, etc.8
For money and definitions alike, bad drives out good. Absurdist conceptions of
freedom serve only to undermine valid ones, which in turn exposes us to the kinds
of political schemes proposed by Skinner and Chomsky. Consider how the "theory"
of 30 years ago has become the "practice" of today. While Skinner's name may not
have the currency it once did, his environmental determinism has actually become
the de facto psychological ideology of the "social constructionist" left, which
also, in the wake of Communism's demise, has adopted an "anarchist" persona
mirroring Chomsky's.
But there is a slight difference between the two thinkers. Skinner's implicit
vision of who would be a free man is as unimaginable as a square circle, yet
Chomsky's can (to some degree) be conceived and has, in fact, recently been
dramatized: Tom Hanks in "Cast Away." But whatever might be said of such a life,
it has never been one that men of freedom and dignity have sought.
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| 1 | This worthiness was recognized also by editor James Peck, who
included an abbreviated version of the essay in 1987's "The Chomsky Reader." As
Clemson University psychologist Robert L. Campbell has observed, "Once Chomsky
put forth these arguments, the demise of behaviorism . . . [was] assured. B.F.
Skinner never answered Chomsky's arguments in print . . ."
(dailyobjectivist.com/Extro/dividedlegacyofnoamchomsky3.asp). |
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| 2 | Chomsky believes he's making a point when he asks whether a
Harvard psychologist "would become a baker or lumberjack if he could earn more
money that way." Personally, I'd like to ask whether Chomsky would trade the
money, prestige, and respect of an MIT professorship for a post at, for example,
Brooklyn Polytechnic.
Also, looking at the last item on this list, we might
ask why the teachers' unions are forever telling us that we must raise salaries
if we want to attract more and "better" people to go into teaching. Will people
suddenly recognize the "intrinsically rewarding" nature of education once
"differential reward" (i.e., the lure of better-paying jobs) is
eliminated? |
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| 3 | If the professor still "awaits a rational argument" for the
importance of "extrinsic reward" (i.e., incentives, monetary and otherwise),
he'll find possibly the best in James D. Gwartney and Richard L. Stroup's "What
Everyone Should Know About Economics and Prosperity,"
1993. |
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| 4 | This is not to affirm that prices are the only values. For an
important clarification, see "Market Value" in Harry Binswanger (ed.), "The Ayn
Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z," 1986, pp. 280–1.
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| 5 | It would be quite an understatement to say that Chomsky's
actual position vis-à-vis anarchism and statism is somewhat "problematic."
Can he really somehow be both a socialist and an anarchist — or does logic
force him off the fence? In "Class Warfare" (1996, pp. 122–3), he declares,
"[R]ight now I'd like to strengthen the federal government. The reason is . . .
in this world there happen to be huge concentrations of private power [i.e.,
business corporations] which are as close to tyranny and as close to totalitarian
as anything humans have devised . . . [s]o you end up supporting centralized
state power" to fight that "private power." This is a wholly unremarkable
statement: socialism, the suppression of private enterprise, operatively requires
"centralized state power." Who, from Lenin to Rothbard, would object? Even more
along these lines, he (in a September 1999 interview with The Progressive)
decries privatization as a crusade to destroy "every aspect of human life and
attitudes and thought that involve social solidarity." What kind of libertarian,
let alone anarchist, considers state coercion, not mutual consent, the foundation
(indeed, the whole) of "social solidarity"? Worse yet, our New Left radical is
parroting "corporate liberal" Robert Kuttner, who too uses "social solidarity" to
label the meta-value supposedly evinced by welfare state programs ("The Life of
the Party: Democratic Prospects in 1988 and Beyond," 1987, pp. 16–7). But
compare all this with the fact that Chomsky regularly identifies himself as a
"classical liberal" and earnestly bemoans how liberalism, a term that once
stood for opposition to (or at least limitations on) state power, has been
"perverted" to mean "a commitment to the use of state power for welfare
purposes." He even fancies himself a kind of "[Old Right] conservative, like
[Sen. Robert] Taft, [who] wants to cut back state power, cut back state
intervention in the economy — the same as someone like [Sen.] Mark Hatfield
— to preserve the Enlightenment ideals of freedom of expression, freedom
from state violence, of law-abiding states, etc." (quoted in Milan Rai,
"Chomsky's Politics," 1995, p. 188 n. 24). Now compare that with his conviction
that "New Deal liberalism . . . [and] its achievements, which are the result of a
lot of popular struggle, are worth defending and expanding" ("The Common Good,"
1998, p. 5). If this is still not enough, I give you the lagniappe of a
"socialist" who worries about the danger that corporations — social bodies
— pose to individualism, since "[t]here's nothing individualistic about
corporations" ("Keeping the Rabble in Line," 1994, p. 280). Though if that's
true, then wouldn't these corporations be veritable fonts of "social solidarity"
— not "private power" — which would consequently obviate the need for
their suppression by "centralized state power"?
My "conclusion" is that
Chomsky's political vocabulary, like Skinner's techno-cant, is a dialect of
Newspeak that I'll "happily leave to others to decode."
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| 6 | Skinner seems to anticipate this when he writes, "What the
layman calls a reward is a 'positive reinforcer'" (p.
31). |
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| 7 | The term "wage slavery" is generally associated with Marx's
prediction that wages under capitalism would eventually fall to rock bottom, so
that the worker, much like a slave, would be laboring for subsistence —
hence, "wage slavery."
But near the end of his essay, Chomsky writes, "An
increase in wages, in Marx's phrase, 'would be nothing more than a better
remuneration of slaves, and would not restore, either to the worker or to
the work, their human significance and worth'" (original emphasis). So, whereas
subsistence wages drive the worker into "misery, agony of toil, slavery,
ignorance, brutality [and] mental degradation" (again, Marx), even
ever-increasing wages deny him his "human significance and worth," the absence of
which we evidently must acknowledge like the presence of the emperor's nouveau
apparel. Wages plummet, wages soar, wages stagnate — it's all the
same "slavery." |
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| 8 | Elsewhere (p. 390), Chomsky reveals that he (like Marx in "On
the Jewish Question") agrees when "Rousseau argues that civil society is hardly
more than a conspiracy by the rich to guarantee their
plunder." |
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