Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship

An earlier work of Chomsky's--this one dates from 1969--and is basically divided into two parts--the first of which was designed to point out to the reader the pervasive and hypocritical liberal intellectual viewpoint which helped to lead us to the diasastrous American Southeast Asian policy most infamously represented by the Vietnam debacle. The second part is to draw a similarity to another conflict in which the United States played almost no role--The Spanish Civil War. Chomsky's main point seems to be that so-called left wing (liberal) intellectuals and scholars (Americans and otherwise) at least in the twentieth century were actually anti-revolutionary and driven by their own particular agendas and not at all by historical truth and not motivated at all by the mass movements or popular will of the people they would claim to be helping. Remarking on Vietnam we find them often (at least cited here) having no problem with American interference in other countries internal affairs. We find them often supporting the crushing of popular dissent or will when they consider it to be in their view to America's interest. In any case Chomsky is referring to the time before the war became an unpopular and a parallel could be drawn to that period in time to the period we are in right now in Iraq--in the sense that one could almost substitute some of the players and some of their concepts. Take for instance McGeorge Bundy arguing (on page 100) for more power to be concentrated in the executive branch (the presidency) of the government--which is a basic tenet of the current neo-cons. Bundy pointing out Robert McNamara (his generation's Donald Rumsfeld) as a superior executive and someone who should be given more and more power.

To go on to the Spanish Civil War--Chomsky most notably takes to task a prominent historian--Gabriel Jackson for his pro-Soviet anti-revolutionary stance. This is a not a contradicttion to Chomsky (nor to me for that matter--I have read quite a bit on this particular event and it's my view that the Soviet Union or Stalin sabotaged the Republic, or the workers' movement best represented by the Socialist UGT and the larger Anarchist CNT). The Spanish communist party gained controlled over the Loyalist Govt. through the banks and lending institutions, through the almost total control and distribution (or lack of) of arms coming into the country meant to fight the fascist Franco and his allies Mussolini and Hitler, through the demolition of the new foundations in agriculture and industry begun by those who had initially stopped Franco and his allies in their tracks, and through the network of police and terror squads that they set up to carry out the torture and assassinations against those supposedly fighting the same war and on the same side who would not kowtow to their dogmatic view of the world thereby highjacking and destroying the revolutionary aspirations of the mass of the population. The historical viewpoint in this particular matter--which has gotten very short shrift at least when considering it as the major prelude into the World War II years--has gone through a sea change since this particular Chomskian work. For those interested history now records this event with a lot more accuracy and much more in line with Chomsky's premise. The pro-soviet histories written by left leaning intellectuals upto and into the times of the early 70's have been for the most part discredited. ( )