Noam Chomsky on Anarchism (interview quote)

Sonali Kolhatkar, host and producer of Uprising Radio, interviewing Noam Chomsky.

SK: Professor Chomsky, you have identified with anarchist politics throughout your political career. How have your views on anarchism evolved over the years- do you see it as a viable worldview on a mass scale in terms of achieving social justice to solve the problems of the type we were just discussing [nuclear war and environmental destruction, specifically- ed.]?

NC: Well I’ve, since childhood, when I was haunting anarchist bookstores and anarchist offices in New York since- from then until today. I’ve essentially understood anarchism to be not a specific recipe for how the world should work, although it has principles. But rather, as a kind of tendency in human affairs towards trying to identify structures of hierarchy, oppression, domination- where ever they may be from the family, to international affairs. Identifying them, insisting they justify themselves- they are not self-justifying- and if they can’t make that burden of justification, moving to dismantle them. Hence, move towards a more free world. Exactly where it’ll lead, I don’t know. I’m certainly not smart enough to say and I don’t think anyone is. Political activism, I think, is a little bit like mountain climbing. You work hard, you climb a peak and you discover to your surprise that there’s another peak, back there, that’s even higher that you hadn’t even known about and you start to work on that one. Well, yeah, that’s what things are like. There’s lots of peaks around there that have not entered into our consciousness and I hope we get to them, but there’s a lot of work to get to until we do. As this proceeds, we get closer to a kind of anarchist vision.