Addenda To Yesterday's Bit on Marx

I have been constantly amazed how often I talk to someone with a degree from a fine university, and when I bring up Chomsky's name they are dismissive, and quite often because they don't side with the Marxists. Which seems like at least two thick layers of irony, to me: Chomsky over and over and over has pointed out how, contrary to public opinion, it's the formally educated who are likely to believe what the State would like them to believe. Even liberals, highly educated: you will hear the most naive idiocies uttered by them, especially about "business" and "economics." But more to-the-point irony for our purposes here, the idea that Chomsky is a Marxist. That's just embarrassing. You paid how much for your degree?

Nevertheless, Chomsky articulately echoes my views on Marx (although I will, more incoherently, expound and pontificate [not really] and sound my barbaric yawp on Marx in a week or 23 days), in an interview in the Spring 1984 issue of Vancouver's Open Road journal:

Q: What, in general, is your opinion of Marx and Marxism?

Chomsky: Marx was person, not a God. The concept "Marxism" belongs to the history of organized religion, and should not be employed by a free and independent person. Marx was a major intellectual figure and it would be foolish not to learn from him or to value his contributions properly. He was, like anyone, limited in his perceptions and understanding. His personal behavior (not to be confused with his thought) often left much to be desired, to put it mildly. There are also very dangerous and destructive elements in his ideas, some of which underlie the worst elements of Leninist thought and practice.
-found p.565 of Language and Politics


I don't feel like I really "know" about Marx's character - especially after reading Wheen - as Chomsky seems to know Marx here. More divergently from Chomsky, I wonder about the true role of influence of "dangerous and destructive ideas" in books.

I think Noam is probably right about dangerous and destructive ideas in books. Or at least my overweening audaciousness would prefer to believe it. It's like Timothy Leary said, when a reporter asked him about the dangers of young people trying LSD: Leary said, yes, it is dangerous. And lock up the libraries! Books have led to more mayhem than LSD ever did.

I also suspect (hell: very strongly suspect) that Noam was not an Ironist. We Ironists will read books differently, but that is for another day...