For the past five years or so I’ve been aware of Noam Chomsky’s political activism, and I’ve always enjoyed reading (if not entirely agreeing with) his essays. He’s a self-described “libertarian socialist", which is a philosophy that basically proposes a free society in which ownership of the means of production is entirely in the hands of labor unions. He’s more or less obsessed by the idea that private ownership of business necessarily puts power over laborers in the hands of an elite group and that said power is always used oppressively. (I’m generalizing here, though not, I think, unfairly. Nevertheless, I welcome the input of any libertarian socialists or Chomsky scholars who feel so inclined.)

My most prominent objections to that are these: America has a dominant middle class (that Marx never considered when he started all the hooplah about class) which, as a group, more or less rules the country– the members being both workers and property owners. And, presumably the nature of the oppression which private business exerts is that it keeps laborers from ever getting ahead, which would seem to have to be measured by material prosperity and which would not be possible if private business was outlawed anyway. For, how would they ever have the means to rise above their station?

Ownership seems to me to be a somewhat fundamental aspect of humanity. For the purpose of this blog, I define ownership as rightful possession of property. Removing that seems to me to be quite in contrast to Freedom as an individualist value. What is Chomsky’s version of liberty to someone who wants to make a better mousetrap than the one the mousetrap union is producing? Too, what motivation is there in such a society for change, innovation, or diversity?