Noam Chomsky Quotes About Tyranny

• Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of 'free contract' between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.

  Noam Chomsky

  Errors, Views, Ideas

  "On Anarchism". Interview with Tom Lane, chomsky.info. December 23, 1996.

• What is called 'capitalism'is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close cooperation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society.

  Noam Chomsky

  Powerful, Exercise, Accountability

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “Language and Politics”, p.784, AK Press

• Moral cowardice and intellectual corruption are the natural concomitants of unchallenged privilege.

  Noam Chomsky

  Intellectual, Privilege, Moral

• The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies.

  Noam Chomsky

  Government, Democracy, Corporations

• There isn't much point arguing about the word "libertarian." It would make about as much sense to argue with an unreconstructed Stalinist about the word "democracy" - recall that they called what they'd constructed "peoples' democracies." The weird offshoot of ultra-right individualist anarchism that is called "libertarian" here happens to amount to advocacy of perhaps the worst kind of imaginable tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. If they want to call that "libertarian," fine; after all, Stalin called his system "democratic." But why bother arguing about it?

  Noam Chomsky

  Democracy, Want, Libertarian

• But, that’s the whole point of corporatization - to try to remove the public from making decisions over their own fate, to limit the public arena, to control opinion, to make sure that the fundamental decisions that determine how the world is going to be run - which includes production, commerce, distribution, thought, social policy, foreign policy, everything - are not in the hands of the public, but rather in the hands of highly concentrated private power. In effect, tyranny unaccountable to the public.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Fate, Hands

  "On Microsoft and Corporate Control of the Internet". Interview with Anna Couey, chomsky.info. May 6, 1998.

• We don't live in tyrannies, you know, the king doesn't decide what's legitimate, and there's much more freedom than there was in the past.

  Noam Chomsky

  Kings, Past, Tyranny

  Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

• [Mikhail Bakunin] expectations were generally confirmed, including his prediction that some would seek to gain state power on the backs of popular revolution, then constructing a "Red bureaucracy" that would be one of the worst tyrannies in history, while others would recognize that power lies elsewhere and would serve as its apologists, becoming mystifies, "disablers," and managers while demanding the right to function in "technocratic isolation," in World Bank lingo.

  Noam Chomsky

  Lying, Expectations, World

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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