The Magna Carta and privitization
Via Toms Dispatch Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, The Great Charter, Its Fate, and Ours…Posted by Noam Chomsky comes this essay on our long traditions in the battle of the commons and ‘privatization’. It is an interesting read. (hat tip Dale)
I thought it was interesting for the history, which is not well taught in the schools i went to.
of, course, even without the history, “self respecting men” should find the principles obvious and worth fighting for… Necessary to fight for.
But we don’t have any self respecting men around here anymore.
Well I haven’t read the Linebaugh work Chomsky cites but the premise as stated in its Amazon preview seems a little shaky.
In particular there seems to be some deep confusion between the notion of the “common man” and the “free man”. It is precisely in the thirteenth century that the legal status of the peasantry was being systematically repressed via a rigid application of the originally Roman maxim “quod omnes homines aut liberi sunt ‘ aut servi, id est, omnis homo aut est liber aut servus,” “every man is either free or slave” on a legal system that was more graduated.
The whole thing is complicated but can be summarized as having Magna Carta and the Forest Charter expanding the universe of rights of free men even as the membership in that universe was shrinking. Ultimately the operational definition of “free man” was “land owner” with legal rights and certainly voting rights denied to a clear majority of the population in much the same way as in later centuries we see the distinction between the “bourgeoisie” and “gentry” on one hand and the “proletariat”, “urban workers”, “peasants” on the other.
In total context Magna Carta and even the Forest Charter are more a Bill of Rights for the Upper 10% than a “Commons Rights for the Common Man” that Linebaugh (and Chomsky following him) would like to make it.
I am currently re-reading the classic literature on villeinage with the key authors being Paul Vinogradoff, Fredric Seebolm and my favorite legal historian F.W. Maitland (e.g. see Pollack and Maitland: History of English Law Down to the Reign of Edward I, and maybe steer away from Chomsky’s suggestion of Blackstone’s Commentaries)
Bruce
it’s all inside baseball to me.
but just as “we hold these truths to be self evident…” managed to forget about blacks and women and men who didn’t own property
the idea caught on, so that a Lincoln could say “we are now testing whether …”
so i personally don’t think it’s a good idea to nit pick great acts in the cause of freedom because those who did them perhaps did not entirely know what we…. or perhaps did, but also know these things are done one day at a time.
especially because people need a flag to rally to when those freedoms are being taken away as we speak.
Well before Chomsky became a hero to the remnants of the New Left themselves remnant of the Old (Stalinist)Left via his political commentary he made his reputation as the founder of Generative Linguistics. Which perverted a dictum of the founder of Structuralism Saussure which read “synchronicity trumps diachronicity” to promote a theory of original human language acquisition that makes no fucking sense at all in evolutionary or historical terms.
Chomsky deliberately exploited Saussure to promote an explicitly ahistorical model of language. For him to turn around and cite any kind of history, still less this sloppy version to this unreconstructed historian just smacks of his fundamental contempt for history when it conflicts with his pet theories.
Forgive me, or not, but IMHO you can fuck Chomsky and every theory driven pony he has ever ridden. Even where I agree with the substance. He is from my standpoint as a historian and sometime student of language theory the proverbial blind pig.
Have an acorn Noam.
(which explains why I can’t have nice things. Oddly some people think I am not nice)
Bruce
Be aware that we eat our own at our own expense. Suffice it to say that Chomsky is one of the few who can be counted upon to speak truth to power. whether we always agree with his truth is less important than our support for the general value of his commentary in the more important ideological battles with the neo-conservatives of the day whose only interest is to advance their personal wealth, influence and/or power. Remember the concept of standing together rather than hanging individually. Why can’t there be differences of opinion on one side of an ideological divide that are minor to the differences that exist across that divide? It’s a matter of having personal respect for someone who fights on your side even if that someone uses tactics that you don’t agree with. Pick on the scum at places like the AEI who have the audacity to be called scholars, giving a whole new meaning to the word.
That’s what apologists are saying about Alexander Cockburn in his eulogies.
I would ask “Whose truth?” “Whose power?”
To pour gas on this fire I feel the same about Nader and Kucinich. Both in my mind enemies of Social Democracy as advocates of “Heighten the Contradictions”
Menaces all. Me? I am a Sidney Hook guy. Google is your friend here.
Bruce
To each their own, but Hook was another time if not so long past. The time may be short, but the diferences are significant. now rather than the Red Menace ravaging the globe we’ve got the Globalization of self interest. One point doesn’t change. You can pick your friends and who it is you suppport. Your enemies won’t give you that choice. The extreme right is a small minority, but they are cohesive in their general support of one another. If not specifics of ideeas at least in the generalities of their ideology.
Chomsky is not my friend. I am deeply invested in a certain Theory of Knowledge of only tangential relation to Chomsky’s views of Imperialism. And Chomsky is contemptuously dismissive of that underlying philosophy based on reasoning more akin to Lysenko and the brain boy Straussian Neo-Cons that delivered us into 30s era Stalinist scienticism and the 2000s Iraqi War respectively,
Karl Popper didn’t get everything right but his seminal work “The Open Society and It’s Enemies” adequately identifies the common roots of Stalinism, Fascism, Naderism and Chomskyism as opposed to the Pragmatic/Utilitarian tradition of James, Dewey, (yes) Hook, and Popper.
Chomsky’s linguistics are an academic fraud and his politics are fundamentally hostile to Social Democracy, and certainly that of the pragmatic strain represented by the New Deal. On my reading Chomsky would not be sympathetic to Social Security as constructed and actively hostile to the compromise represented by ACA.
Personally I am inclined to spit on theory driven purists who disdain historical data when it is inconvenient to their pet theories. Which includes Noam.
Frankly the “Enemy of my Enemies is my Friend” is a piss poor approach to either academics or practical
politics. And “oh he is an anti-imperialist” doesn’t cover all sins. So is every dickhead who spray paints a Red A on a wall while smashing plate glass not less a dick because in some sense “he means well”.
For all his faults Marx was on to something when he distinguished the real proletariat from the lumpen. A d I would add lumpen enablers like Chomsky (who to be fair also thrills those who used to be called ‘Parlour Pinks’).
Christ! Once again explaining why I can’t have nice things. Because I follow anti-Stalinists like Hook and Popper and resist lining up with 75 years of ‘Popular Front’ ideology.
I’ll try only one more. First, your reference to Stalinism is so dated as to virtually dismiss anything else said in the same body of thought. Please!! Who on Earth even cares about the abuses of past tyrannical regimes. It’s history. Now we have far more sophisticated abusers whose primary focus is on the maintenance of power and wealth. They need not kill their enemies when they can buy enough allies.
I’ve read much of what Chomsky has to say and what has been attributed to Chomsky by others. The two don’t match up too well. Noam Chomsky is abusive to others in print?? He may argue a point, but he uses logic and a host of historical knowledge. Nor have I read him as a dismissive discussant.
The point is that you and all thinkers of a progressive persuasion have a real antagonist in the form of accumulated wealth. The enemy is not Chomsky or any other like minded thinker that challenges the power elite of our society. Rove, Ailes, Adelson, Peterson, the Kochs and their media sycophants are the threat to the ideals that you and I hold to as a better way forward. You need to understand who is worth fighting against and the harm done by snipping at those whose ideas more reasonably match your own.