1. W.S.M. is, I believe, a unique hybrid of state socialist traditions and various anarchist ideals. It produces, at times, policy contradictions, such as the statements 'We do not argue for armed revolution' (post 3084) and 'our declaration of principles pecifically states that we can use the control of the states armed froces' (post 3090). Like anarchists, W.S.M. claims to repudiate hierarchy (last post), yet like state socialists W.SM. requires that 'once a vote has been taken, you abide by it' (post 3076)---without recognizing that minority/majority dichotomies are hierarchal. Like anarchists, W.S.M states that '[i]t would be for the workers of teh world to decide how to divide up their resources'(last post), yet like state socialists W.S.M. makes sweeping assumptions such as that 'communal swimming pools' (post 3090) will replace everyone's private ones. Your proposition that a global revolution can occur without centralized organization, or without considerable geographic inter-class conflicts, is, I believe, untenable. I grant that W.S.M.'s 'principled' refusal to commit to specifics makes for popular agitation (consider your assertion ((last post)) that '[f]or teh very rich [standards of living] may go down and up'---which is it?), but I maintain actual global revolutionary action without specifics would only create anarchy (in the worst sense). I applaud your tenacious faith in 'a biological propensity towards...sociability' (please see my remarks on the concept of a 'fairness gene' in this post), but cannot countenance your leaving a task as important---or as complicated---as world socialism (world-wide modified human behavior) to 'propensity' alone.*2. Chomsky (as metaphor). Chomsky is a very popular leader of the Left today. One reason, I believe, is because he criticizes the many things about capitalism that are conspicuously indefensible while avoiding the less popular task of proposing specific policies to amend indefensible current practices. This is little more than traditional opposition politics, and Chomsky is often on the lecture circuit telling people what they already think. (Consider Skinner's observation that 'it is probable that our enjoyment [of literature] comes in large measure from the fact that the literary work says what we, the reader, tend to say.'(1))
As far as 'principles being a priori part of human biology' goes, there is long tradition of asserting that 'man' is 'innately' selfish and aggressive, and Chomsky here suggests that certain aspects of 'human nature' are indeed immutable---without considering that phylogenic behaviors, like ontogenic behaviors, are shaped by contingent variables and without considering that 'some phylogenic behavior may have had an ontogenic origin.'(2) ('Black box' critics of behaviorism may find it odd that behaviorism posits that all behavior originates with the individual, not with groups...) To claim that cooperation is 'innate' while aggression is 'learned,' or that aggression is 'learned' while cooperation is 'innate,' is to enter into speculative value judgments (language games) that have little bearing on the salient issue, which is: to change what human behavior can be (ontogenically and phylogenically) changed for the better.
3. More on Chomsky. Chomsky's original claim to fame was his famous attack upon behaviorism in 1959.** His review of Verbal Behavior has been one of the most elaborate straw men ever put forth in an academic periodical. His indiscriminate references to 'manipulation drives' (p. 40) and 'response' (32) demonstrate that Chomsky attributed to Skinner's (radical) behaviorism the primitive and incompatible S-R psychology of Pavlov; his criticism that the behaviorist 'cannot at present show' lawful activity in all areas of behavior (30) was inconsistent with with his own admission that 'present-day linguists cannot provide a present account of these integrative processes' (55); his criticism that Skinner extrapolated from animal behavior to human behavior (26) was hypocritical considering Chomsky's predilection for deriving universal grammatical laws from primarily English samples; and (finally) Chomsky's repeated (35, 37) habit of pulling quotes out of context demonstrated his own excessive bias.
Years later Chomsky, reviewing Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the New York Review of Books (hardly an anarchist institution) would baldly call Skinner (p. 178-79) a Nazi** while continuing his predilections for straw-men descriptions of the subject he reviewed (168, 172) as he continued to merrily pull quotes out of context (163, 176) in order to prove his false assertions. The point of all Chomskyıs exertions? To insist that humans (with their 'biological propensities') are autonomous beings that can change their behavior (and economic conditions, incidentally) without having to change the society they live in. Thanks to Chomsky's exertions (and the luster of M.I.T.), we now get claims as ridiculous (and ideologically dangerous) as these: 'One [scientific] study even concluded that happiness is 80 percent heritable---it depends little on wealth, achievement or marital status.'(3) In other words: happiness free of all tangible contingencies! This is todayıs 'post-behaviorist' ideological climate---and Chomsky has played his part...
4. RED: What is to be avoided is positioning humans as passive reflectors of their environment, rather than as biological entities in dialogue with their environment, and with something which they bring from within themselves to teh equation.
I hope my comment:
: : One reason why small communities---employing the science of behavior---have a better chance of succeeding than large-scale attempts (of what is essentially group behavior modification) is because the (contrived, immediate) reinforcements can be regulated---and monitored---with greater accuracy and greater alacrity than reinforcements in huge, diverse populations where actions 'ricochet' many, many times before consequence.
would demonstrate the bidirectional view that I hold...plus I hope the Skinner quote '[i]n the design of his own culture, man could thus be said to control his destiny' would assuage any fears of falling back on S-R Pavlovian reductionism...
However, your rejoinder:
RED: [A] large scale movement has more oportuniy to re-inforce its value system upon subjects, and it has plenty of room for these values to find expression in daily life. When you make socialists you expect teh peoepl to go off and be socialists.
is, in my opinion, unfortunately phrased, if not ominous...
4. I wish to emphasize the 'minority view.' In small communities, consensus is a possibility; in a global state socialism, consensus would be an impossibility. (Muslim men contra American women...) I am concerned with what happens to those who vote, lose the vote, and then are expected to 'abide' (as you put it) with the majority rule. My influence is Rawls, of course. Would you, in designing a society, yet not knowing your position in that society-to-come, risk a chance that you might be a minority member when you design a society in which minorities are expected to 'abide' by the decisions of the majority? W.S.M. has done little, for me, to make clear---or appealing---the fate of the anticipated global minority...
* If such a 'biological propensity' exists, why has socialism been so difficult to achieve in the many attempts of the last two centuries? The traditional answer---'enculturation'---emphasizes the importance of the environment...
** 'Review of Verbal Behavior,' Language, 35: 1, 1959, pp. 26-58. Page numbers refer to that issue.
*** Reprinted in The Chomsky Reader (Pantheon, 1987). Page numbers refer to that edition.
Notes:
1. Skinner, Verbal Behavior (Appleton- Century-Crofts, 1957), p. 273.
2. Skinner, 'The Phylogeny and Ontogeny of Behavior,' Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), p. 203-04.
3. Colt & Hollister, 'Were You Born That Way?,' Life, April 1998, p. 40.
None.
