AtDTDA (4) 111 Anarcho-syndicalists

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

                 Bryan Snyder:
                 I'm a big Chomsky fan and I believe when pinned 
                 down during Q&As (at least in the past, I know he 
                 has) proclaimed Anarcho-syndicalism as the proper 
                 form of a society...  very interesting stuff posted.

"Against the Day" makes Anarchy, Big A in a circle, {you can 
see it on the T-shirts and jackets of self-possessed adolescent
tastemakers, or hardcore punk get-ups and other unforseen
ikons of political theory encountered whilst wandering to and fro 
from one retail establishment to the next} the central mcguffin 
not only of that novel's inner workings, but for all of Pynchon's 
work. It was there all along, but always, to a certain degree, 
sub rosa. 

This little passage from "Murdered by Capitalism" allows 
John Ross to place the our beloved author in a 
hyper-anarchist context:

                 Sasha Berkman and Timothy Leary
                 smoked a joint and got terribly cheery,
                 Zippy the Pinhead and the Molly McGuires
                 roasted Pigasis over the bonfire,
                 "No pork!" Bob Dylan and Ralph Nader protested,
                 "Como no!" Sub Marcos and the Sla contested.
                 Dorthy Day and the Weather Underground.
                 Patty Hearst and Bishop Romero even got down,
                 Wilhelm Reich invited Hegel to his orgone box,
                 rocked the old philosopher down to his socks,
                 Houdini taught George and Jonathan to to disappear,
                 Thomas Pynchon polished the last keg of beer. . . 
                 John Ross: Murdered by Capitalism, pg 343

Mind you, that's a small excerpt from a longer poem
that manages to go on for quite some pages. Ross
insinuates (early on in the book) that Pynchon lived 
just down the road from him for a while, and there's 
nothing in "Murdered by Capitalism" that goes contrary 
to the goings on in Against the Day. Also it's funny
and off-the-wall and offers up an alternate history of
leftism more closely correspondent to reality than the
larger story we've been sold all these years. 

And Murdered by Capitalism has quite a lovely,
hopeful ending:

                 An endless procession
                 right into the sun
                 where the revolution
                 never stops rising.

In this interview, Noam Chomsky describes Anarchism as:

                 as the libertarian left, and from that point of 
                 view anarchism can be conceived as a kind of 
                 voluntary socialism, that is, as libertarian socialist 
                 or anarcho-syndicalist or communist anarchist, in 
                 the tradition of, say, Bakunin and Kropotkin and 
                 others. 

Which compares in an interesting way to:

                 Orwell thought of himself as a member of the 
                 "dissident left," as distinguished from the 
                 "official left," meaning basically the British 
                 Labour party, most of which he had come, 
                 well before the second world war, to regard as 
                 potentially, if not already, fascist. More or less 
                 consciously, he found an analogy between British 
                 Labour and the Communist Party under Stalin - 
                 both, he felt, were movements professing to fight 
                 for the working classes against capitalism, but in 
                 reality concerned only with establishing and 
                 perpetuating their own power. The masses were 
                 only there to be used for their idealism, their class 
                 resentments, their willingness to work cheap and 
                 to be sold out, again and again.
                 Thomas Pynchon, introduction to "1984"

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=1854


                 The Relevance of Anarcho-syndicalism
                 Noam Chomsky interviewed by Peter Jay
                 The Jay Interview, July 25, 1976

                 QUESTION: Professor Chomsky, perhaps we 
                 should start by trying to define what is not 
                 meant by anarchism -- the word anarchy is 
                 derived, after all, from the Greek, literally 
                 meaning "no government." Now, presumably 
                 people who talk about anarchy or anarchism 
                 as a system of political philosophy don't just 
                 mean that, as it were, as of January 1st next 
                 year, government as we now understand it 
                 will suddenly cease; there would be no police, 
                 no rules of the road, no laws, no tax collectors, 
                 no post office, and so forth. Presumably, it 
                 means something more complicated than that.

                 CHOMSKY: Well, yes to some of those questions, 
                 no to others. They may very well mean no 
                 policemen, but I don't think they would mean no 
                 rules of the road. In fact, I should say to begin with 
                 that the term anarchism is used to cover quite a 
                 range of political ideas, but I would prefer to think 
                 of it as the libertarian left, and from that point of 
                 view anarchism can be conceived as a kind of 
                 voluntary socialism, that is, as libertarian socialist 
                 or anarcho-syndicalist or communist anarchist, in 
                 the tradition of, say, Bakunin and Kropotkin and 
                 others. They had in mind a highly organized form 
                 of society, but a society that was organized on the 
                 basis of organic units, organic communities. And 
                 generally, they meant by that the workplace and 
                 the neighborhood, and from those two basic units 
                 there could derive through federal arrangements 
                 a highly integrated kind of social organization 
                 which might be national or even international in 
                 scope. And these decisions could be made over 
                 a substantial range, but by delegates who are 
                 always part of the organic community from which 
                 they come, to which they return, and in which, in 
                 fact, they live.

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19760725.htm