Tag: Politics

Powerful and Thought-Provoking Quotes from Chomsky's Anarchism

Quotes from Noam Chomsky’s On Anarchism

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In this post, I’m sharing powerful, thought-provoking quotes from Noam Chomsky’s On Anarchism. I will start with one that feels compatible with the concept of ungorvenment I discussed in a previous post, where I argue that “we need something we’ll call ungovernment (for now), which is an institution (or a yet undefined thing) whose role is to remove unnecessary control and restore agency, responsibility, and decision-making to individuals.”

… at every stage of history our concern must be to dismantle those forms of authority and oppression that survive from an era when they might have been justified in terms of the need for security or survival or economic development, but that now contribute to — rather than alleviate — material and cultural deficit.

– Noam Chomsky, On Anarchism

The second quote is a rewording by Chomsky of Kant’s defense of the French Revolution:

Freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved.

The third quote is on wage slavery.

If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to rent themselves in order to survive. Now, you can say, “they rent themselves freely, it’s a free contract” — but that’s a joke. If your choice is, “do what I tell you or starve,” that’s not a choice — it’s in fact what was commonly referred to as wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example.

– Noam Chomsky, On Anarchism

(Later in the book, we read the shorter version of the above. Chomsky says, “I think wage slavery is an attack on fundamental human rights.”)

Now, the fourth quote. And I think this can be an add-on to the concept of ungovernment that I’m building. The government has to justify why constraints are in place, and the people must have the right to question it and the right to request amendments.

People have the right to be free, and if there are constraints on that freedom then you’ve got to justify them.

– Noam Chomsky, On Anarchism

And the last one, which reminds us of what Herbert Marcuse says in One-Dimensional Man.

Remember, there are all kinds of ways of thinking that are cut off from us in our society — not because we’re incapable of them, but because various blockages have been developed and imposed to prevent people from thinking in those ways.

– Noam Chomsky, On Anarchism

Notes on Plato’s Laws: Similarities Between Cleinias and Hobbes

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In Plato’s Laws, the Athenian asks Cleinias (who represents Crete) why their law ordains that they should have “common meals and gymnastic exercises, and wear arms.” Cleinias says that “all these regulations have been made with a view to war.” The legislator (must have) believed that “all men are always at war with one another.” And “for what men in general term peace would be said by him to be only a name; in reality every city is in a natural state of war with every other, not indeed proclaimed by heralds, but everlasting.”

This answer reminds me of Thomas Hobbes, who, in Leviathan, writes:

There Is Alwayes Warre Of Every One Against Every One Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man. For WARRE, consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of Warre; as it is in the nature of Weather. For as the nature of Foule weather, lyeth not in a showre or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many dayes together: So the nature of War, consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

Hobbes and Plato’s character Cleinias seem to agree that war exists naturally between people and that the state of war is the natural state even when there’s no fighting going on. It looks like the main thing they don’t align on is the definition of peace. For Cleinias, there isn’t real peace because the underlying condition is always war. So, peace is only a name. It is like a bedsheet covering a dirty mattress. For Hobbes, peace can exist when there’s a power that enforces it.

References:

Plato. Laws. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Apple Books, 2008.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Apple Books, 1679.

The Interpretation of Lies (Part One): Neither True Nor False

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Lying has been an indispensable skill in politics since the beginning of time. In The Republic, Plato writes:

If anyone at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good.

We see here how, from the beginning, philosophers saw that politicians should be allowed to lie. (Today, most of us accept this intuitively.) However, it is also important to note that double standards are employed. In the following paragraph, Plato writes that if the ruler catches anybody other than himself lying, that person must be punished. (We can also add to this that when a person exposes one of the Big Lies told by the government, he will be regarded as a traitor…)

Everything a politician says simultaneously conveys a lie and a truth, whether he is aware of it or not. Those who oppose him will hear the lie; those who support him will hear the truth. But neither of them will be right. Only a skilled (and well-equipped) political analyst will be able to absorb the whole, the truth and the lie together.

When a politician speaks, he is directing his words to friends and enemies at once. He is addressing supporters and non-supporters, and he needs to ensure, consciously or unconsciously, that the message delivered (and interpreted) is just right for all sides. This is especially true in a time when everything ends up online and is accessible to everyone. One is always potentially speaking to everyone on the planet. A politician who is fully transparent with his people, then, is a politician who is fully transparent with his enemies. Such a politician is bound to fail. There is no possibility of addressing his friends separately and his enemies separately. So, if one wants to have a successful career in politics, mastering the art of lying is necessary and required.

Accordingly, since the possibility of a lie is always there, then the following statement is a very reasonable one to accept: that a politician’s words are neither true nor false and are always simultaneously conveying lies and truths.

In (21st century) politics, especially because it is accessible by anyone from anywhere, every political statement is the mother of many interpretations, all of them as real (as true and as false) as the other. Retrospectively (re)visited, the meaning of each statement is different (even if it appears to have remained the same) due to parallax. Looking at an event (or a political statement) from different spacetime coordinates changes its meaning. (The meaning is not in the object itself, which in this case is the event or political statement; the meaning is the subject’s relationship with the object.)

[History, as a true historian would tell you, is not static. New evidence, whether true or fabricated, can change the whole story. How we perceive the past is the past. Historical revisionism, therefore, is an attempt to change the past into a more favorable past. And the same goes for the future. The future is not static either. Both past and future are interpreted, edited, and moderated by the present forces that control the narrative. As for the present, although it may seem like an either/or reality, it almost never is. The moment lived will be revisited and changed later depending on the political needs of the future.]

To understand politics, one must accept the simple fact that all coins are two-sided. While the supporters and their opponents argue which side of the coin holds the real value of the coin (and even try to split it), the skilled analyst knows there’s no one-sided coin and there can never be. The side of the coin that depicts the truth and the side that depicts the lie cannot be split from one another.

Moreover, the side of the coin that depicts the truth according to the supporting party is the side that depicts the lie according to the opposing party, and the side that depicts the lie according to the supporting party is the side that depicts the truth according to the opposing party. Therefore, we can say that each side of the coin has (at least) two contradictory interpretations. This means that every word uttered by a politician has two opposing sides, and each of these opposing sides has at least two interpretations.

It gets even worse when you realize that the political agendas and manifestos that are made public follow the same rules we mentioned above. They can neither be a collection of true intentions nor a collection of lies. So, the political party you are a member of may or may not align with your beliefs behind the scenes, even if on the surface it looks like you’re exactly where you belong. In fact, although this might complicate things further, we can even add that your beliefs are mere echoes of political ideologies that you have inherited or adopted over the years… You know what this means: Nothing is true, politically speaking, and worst of all, nothing is a lie.

So, how can we interpret today’s politics?

This piece was originally published on my Substack on July 26, 2025.