> Dan Carkner writes:
> > Well, the first answer I would say is yes because Chomsky is [an
> > anarchist].
> 
> I thought he described himself as left-liberal.  Is that an anarchist?
> 
> martin

Well, pardon me if have misinterpreted the english term, but "left-liberal" is - as far as I can tell - closer to a social democratic political point of view than an anarchist one. I believe the some of the terms Chomsky have used for his own political beliefs are "libertarian socialist", "left-libertarian" and "anarcho-syndicalist".

The first two terms are generally considered identical to the term anarchism, that is essentially the vision and political movement striving for a classless and stateless society based on voluntary agreement, common ownership of the means of production and a decentralised, confederalist order of decisionmaking. Among those classical anarchists Chomsky have cited as influences on his own political vision are Michail Bakunin, Peter Krapotkin and Rudolf Rocker (all of which you can find an abundance of material by on the Internet). Chomsky have also made numerous references to libertarian marxists (that is anti-leninist communists) like Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Korsch, Anton Pannekoek and Paul Mattick. He has written about this (and more)  in the article "On Anarchism" (originally published as a preface to french anarchist Daniel Guerins book "Anarchism") which can be found on the Internet in several languages.

Anarcho-syndicalism, finally, is essentially a form of revolutionary trade unionism originating from late nineteenth-century France. The basic idea is that it is the trade union - and not the political party - that should be the agent of social revolution. Parties are inherently hierarchical and oppressive, and therefore they are not able to create a free society, even if they manage to "seize power" as the leninists say. Instead workers should organize in One Big Union (as the syndicalist-inspired american Industrial Workers of the World, IWW, put it) with the purpose of bringing the bourgeois society to a halt by means of an expropriative general strike, if necessary combined with an armed uprising. Before the revolution the syndicalist trade union should have organized alternative ways of production and distribution to be put in practise after the general strike. Thus, in the world after the revolution the former trade union destroys the state in favour of a decentralised, direct democratic, self-managed society based on the pre-revolutionary organizaton of the trade union itself. The most famous exemple of syndicalist organization is of course the workers and peasants insurrection during the Spanish civil war 1936-39 (there is a lot of literature on this as well - I believe Chomsky has adressed the issue several times).

In the film "Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media" (by Achbar & Wintonick), Chomsky says that he considers the anarcho-syndicalist vision a rational and humane one, and that it is something he believes we should work for. On other occasions he has said that he is also sympathetic to the idea of "guild-socialism", a type of socialism with a minimal state, as promoted by british thinkers like G.D.H. Cole and Bertrand Russell. (See for instance "Chomsky's Politics", by Milan Rai - Verso 1995.)

Per-Anders Svärd
(Member of the Frescati Anarchist Society at Stockholm University, Sweden, and the syndicalist union SAC)