On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Fernando Colina wrote:

> ... If I'm not mistaken, the point being made is that "capitalists" who
> rely on governmental handouts and decrees in order to create their
> so-called "level-playing-fields" do not operate within Adam Smith's or
> Karl Marx's definition of a free market.  In essence, they are feudal
> lords protecting their interests at the expense of a free market (or a
> democracy).

[1] I think that's essentially correct (with the proviso that, as Chomsky
frequently points out, Smith's and Marx' accounts of capitalism are not
those of their epigoni).  Chomsky is indulging in a faint jeu d'esprit
(half in jest and all in earnest) in pointing out that the "pure"
capitalism of the Cato Institute nowhere exists (elsewhere he says it
can't -- it would end like the Kilkenny cats).  Just as NAFTA did not
establish free trade but rather investors' privileges, so
actually-existing capitalism protects elite wealth and power from the
ravages of the market.

[2] I wouldn't actually call it feudalism, though, except by analogy;
feudalism in Europe (and Asia) was a system of production where the
elite's support was extracted from the direct producers by extra-economic
means (e.g., the peasant "owed" his lord part of his product and some
labor services).  Capitalism (in the largest sense) supervenes when the
surplus that supports the elite is pumped out of the direct producers by
"purely" economic means -- the wage-contract.  Obviously this relation can
underlie various political forms -- and the transition to it occupied
Europe for the better part of a millennium.

[3] Chomsky himself indicates his varied (but not inconsistent) use of the
term "capitalist" when he remarks in the passage quoted (from a reply on
the valuable Z Magazine forums, www.lbbs.org) both

        (a) "The root of the problem" can't be "capitalism," because
        nothing remotely resembling that exists, as the CATO Institute
        will be happy to explain (correctly)...

and

        (b) It is true that in the background lie questions of state
        capitalist [sic] power about control over Middle East oil reserves
        ...

Regards, C. G. Estabrook