I owe the list an explanation and it will be restricted to the one book
_World Orders Old And New_ by Noam Chomsky. Without defining the terms
'politics' and 'economics', let's say that they describe areas of human
activity and they may be completely separate or they may overlap either
completely or partly. I'm saying that when Chomsky discusses 'economics'
I'm led to believe that I'm listening to a bitter, angry and Puritanical
old man who's had a cushy academic career and never been cold or hungry
except for perhaps a trip to a ski lodge.
More to the point, how should the book itself be taken? As a political
tract that urges action against coercive state force, it's fine. It's one
thing to 'Just say no' to state force but it may be quite another kind of
thing to reduce world hunger. Chomsky's economic rant is disjointed and is
remarkably similar to what Pat Buchannan or Ross Perot have to say. The
writing itself lacks continuity and is unlike Chomsky's writing on
political topics. It consists of fragments and the frequent repetition of
naively frightening things -- Bretton Woods, speculative capital, exchange
rates, national debt. I find myself asking 'so what?' Chomsky quotes Adam
Smith out of context frequently and never mentions Karl Marx. The missing
Marx is a remarkable piece of dishonesty and causes me to view the book as
a quaint political tract.


F. Leon Wilson wrote:
>On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Wat Tyler wrote:
>
>> I believe that professor Chomsky simply does not have a clue when he writes
>> about "economics."
>
>F. Leon wrote:
>
>Whom do you "recognize" as being a strong person in "economics?"
>
>> Wat Tyler wrote:
>> I have been reading _World Orders Old And New_ and cannot find a
>> Chomsky sentence on the topic of economics that does not depend
>> entirely on loaded words for its meaning.
>
>F. Leon wrote:
>
>Is it possible that the topic of "World Orders" is by its self "loaded?"
>
>> Wat Tyler wrote:
>> If one sentence free of loading can be found, I'd like to see it.
>