James A. McDonald wrote:
There is ample Chomsky material outside this quote supporting socialism, and as well as socialism, those measures that socialism makes necessary, namely silencing of dissent, mass murder, and rule by terror.
Ah, so now we see why Mr. McDonald feels forced to interpret everything Chomsky writes as meaning the exact opposite of what it says - why Mr. McDonald thinks that Chomsky *must* be trying to promote totalitarian repression, even though Chomsky nowhere advocates repression of any kind.
There is ample Chomsky material outside this quote supporting socialism,
correct.
and as well as socialism, those measures that socialism makes necessary, namely silencing of dissent, mass murder, and rule by terror.
Mr. McDonald infers this because, although Chomsky, if taken at face value, does not _appear_ to be advocating "mass murder, and rule by terror", McDonald __knows__ that: 1. a society without capitalism must be based on rule by terror. and 2. anybody as intelligent as Chomsky knows (1). thus anybody who advocates socialism is really advocating rule by terror and so Chomsky clearly means the opposite of what he says. Mr. McDonald's reasoning is perfect except that (1) is false. If the "unwashed masses", the unruly mob should forget their place in life (to be subservient to the elite, who are superior, because they claim they are) and abolish the state, the army and the police and if they in their foolishness should decide that they never liked capitalism and from now on everything should be free then they have no need to oppress people like Mr. McDonald if he wishes to try to accumulate capital by offering goods and/or services for a price. Since everything is free in this hypothetical society, nobody will have any reason to buy your goods and/or services Mr. McDonald, because they can get them somewhere else for free. Thus capitalism will never return (unless people who prefer a repressive society restore capitalism by force) without anybody doing anything to repress capitalism or other dissident ideas. I think this is the sort of society Mr. Chomsky is advocating. Of course, Mr. McDonald _knows_ that such a society is impossible because everybody is as selfish as he is so nobody will want to share anything or give anything away for free and they won't do so unless forced to. Again, you are mistaken. The unwashed masses, while far from perfect, are much more altruistic than right-wing cypherpunks such as yourself (I realise that many cypherpunks are not right-wing) and when given the chance they have shown that they prefer something that resembles Chomsky's society more than the usual state/army/police-enforced capitalism. Examples where the working class has had a brief taste of freedom are Paris, 1871, Ukraine ~1917, Spain, 1920s and Derry, Ireland ~1969. In every case capitalism (Soviet state capitalism in the case of the Ukraine) was restored by force within a few months or years. I don't think anyone thinks this mailing list is the right place to discuss your Chomsky conspiracy theories so if you haven't finished yet, take them to alt.conspiracy. Note: if Mr. McDonald pig-headedly insists on replying to this post on the mailing list, I will almost certainly ignore him, out of consideration for the rest of you. P.S. Lewis McCarthy wrote: "Quick, somebody mention Hitler". Okay. Mr. McDonald is as fascist as Hitler.