:: Noam Chomsky : Two kinds of democracy 1/3 ::

[mendali]

This sounds pretty early. Anyone have a date on this?

[noobler9]

if I recall correctly, lenin said something about taking turns ruling, which sounds a bit like republicans and democrats to a certain degree, passing the buck along constantly communism comes from marx who was inspired by the french revolution which comes from the american one the bastard grandson of the american revolution bit back lol

[jv4vidss]

Noam!!

[seans63lemansSD]

This fact that this only has 18,000 views, says something.

[thespacialone]

@seans63lemansSD I think it tells you one of two things. Either that the evil elitists are right and nature decrees that the goats lead while the sheep tamely follow, or the not-so-evil elitists, who seem to have a higher regard for the acuity of the masses, need to work harder themselves to mould the public mind to be acceptive of such ideas as presented here by the speaker. Caveat to the latter: they won't like you for it, because the other side has the more immediately saleable propaganda.

[thespacialone]

Incorrect use of "naturally" at 9.02. I thought the cunning linguist would know this, or maybe he's dumbing it down for his bewildered herd

[shallbeagain]

@thespacialone Why incorrect?

[thespacialone]

@shallbeagain Lol, that I cannot tell you without looking it up. It's poor grammar to use "naturally" in such circumstances, google the question to see why.

[anonymity11]

Wow, I can't believe what I'm reading.

"We don't WANT Democracy becase Democracy always evolves into Oligarchy/Dictatorship"

How more fucking distorted can you get. What is this world coming to. I guess by your careful choice of word "Republican" that you are one of the right wingers trying spread propaganda and distort things.

[prepper1987]

The US isn't a Democracy. We're a Constitutional Democratic REPUBLIC. We don't WANT Democracy becase Democracy always evolves into Oligarchy/Dictatorship

[PavedStones]

"The US isn't a Democracy. We're a Constitutional Democratic REPUBLIC."

Self contradiction, much?

[shifty1367]

lol see u watched that propoganda video? thats the same place that uninformed beck gets his info from. please stop watching that and open your eyes

[RadioheadaphexZappa]

Corporatism = Fascism

[TMNEnglish]

Jesus fucking Christ. Listening to you prattle on banal fictions is making my ears bleed. Well, I'm not so much listening as reading, so It'd probably make my eyes bleed. Semantics.

[Respublica1000]

Google: Noam Chomsky, Closet Capitalist

One set of rules for us; another for the so called "intellectual elite."

[Chuichupachichi]

The dissemination of propaganda to manufacture consent is precisely the reason why Marx & Marxist rulers loved & still love democracy. Communists will force Marxism at gunpoint. However, the more patient Socialists will propagate deceptively subversive ideas during the decades required to brainwash a society into democratically choosing Marxism. The 2008 presidential elections marked the first time in which the majority of American society "consciously" chose Marxism. Prior to that, Marxism had

[Dalambam]

@Chuichupachichi

Man... You're totally out of your mind. Try to get out of your bubble some day, seriously.

[Chuichupachichi]

long been peddled to Americans under the disguise of being the American way. Decades of that and its compounding perpetuation finally resulted in the Marxist brainwashing of over 50% of Americans

"Public Relations" AKA "advertising" by the use of brainwashing techniques is how Edward Freud fed the little greed of Corporate America until it grew into a monstrous greed. Women were convinced to suck on penises until they drew smoke from them. Thus, empowering the c%@#suckers. oops, "cigarettes"!

[Chuichupachichi]

Speaking of "democracy", that bit of scoundrels action from Freud was simply 1 more way in which the democratic "scientists" of the systematically stringent application of methodologically objective empirical "voting" has contributed to the welfare of society. Get your therapy today! The elitists ruler's tools of control over the mentally lesser endowed will cure your immaterial mind of the ill effects from the immaterial culprits. Scientifically immaterially proved by majority vote from the APA

[analord]

the weirdest thing about noam chomsky is that to this day nobody knows what he looks like

[wearechangenorwich]

haha, his ideas on 9/11 might be off the mark by a mile, but he hits the spot elsewhere, thanks for sharing.

[joeyfup]

i don't agree with one thing he said

[aewester]

well that's too bad, because what he said is FACTUAL

[frateradrastus]

The problem is that the masses more often are stupid. There are billions of people who are brutalized by their family and their surrounding cultural bigotries into believing in ridiculous, irrational ideas like 'gods', the inferiority of people not in close proximity, and that violence is virtuous, even without a state. You cannot eliminate the violent, brutal cohesive elements in society at large until people start dealing with them in your own lives. You are, in many many ways your own prison.

[spiltteeth]

Kant argued that freedom is the precondition for aquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved.

[frateradrastus]

My argument is that most people aren't free, not just because of governments, but because of culture and the mental and physical abusing of people (I'm implying children) by their families. Most people are filled with lots of bigoted ideas because they never had a chance at personal freedom let alone political. I don't see how you are interpreting the argument from Kant to be opposed to what I am saying. Also, I don't equate democracy with freedom.

[WhoisJacqueFresco]

I would not say stupid, but willful ignorance through the conditioning of their artificial values such as narcissism. The conditioning of opinionism is through schools(We have to be the saviors of the earth), television(My Sweet 16), and other forms of social conditioning. We could go to a resource based economy, but only as an intellegent society. We are heading towards a "brave new world", intellegnce will free us.

[Chuichupachichi]

{The problem is that the masses more often are stupid}

??????????????????????????????­?

{There are billions of people who are brutalized by their family and their surrounding cultural bigotries into believing in ridiculous, irrational ideas like there being billions of people who are brutalized by their family and their surrounding cultural bigotries}

Thank you Mr. Masses

[Chuichupachichi]

Yes, I see! So, when after every individual person deals with the "violent, brutal cohesive elements within their own lives". Then, they can effectively eliminate the violent, brutal cohesive elements in society at large"???

Question - After all individuals make themselves peaceful, who exactly will comprise the "brutally cohesive violent society at large"?

Thank you once again Mr. Masses

[inbrooklyn2008]

Noam Chomsky is a hero of humanity.

[OmegaTroll69]

great video

[FailJustPwnd]

One of my favorite people. Thanks for putting this here. :]

[towafit]

Fantastic videos.

[aaliathepowerof1]

Thanks for the vids.

[calumadair]

elitism is inevitable inepttroopr. marxist/leninsm was designed to be elitist, it was an apaptation of the original intent of communism to allow lenin to rule in a socialist society. he realised that the progression of socialism onto marxism would fail. theres little point in trying to endorse the working of leninism or indeed marxism, as it is simply only a theoretical concept and shall never work in a society where people have any aspiration whatsoever.

[kjuice10]

I completely disagree

[IneptTroopr]

Though I usually agree with Chomsky, I disagree with his perception than Leninism is inherently elitist and authoritarian.

I think that in ideal conditions, you'd get a democratic state through a Leninist revolution; and by democratic I don't be the frauds we have nowadays in the US and Europe, I mean a real workplace democracy.

However the Civil War, which wiped out (through war, starvation and destruction of places of work) the support base of the Bolsheviks, that being the working class.

[observationspring]

"in ideal" etc. -- and thereby lie both the crux and the fallacy of yours and lenin's "real" arguments.

[IneptTroopr]

In "ideal", I mean in a situation where the revolutionary country is not as backwards as 1917 Russia and is not abandoned by other socialists (such as Europe's). I think Lenin's solution is a hell of a lot more practical and achievable than anything anarchists and "libertarian" socialists offer, in that it offers an organized and unified opposition to the ruling class, which by default has the advantage.

Chomsky's anarcho-syndicalism is too utopian to succeed in revolutionary terms.

[emahunn]

I agree that anarcho-syndicalism is utopian but it has proven its practicability during the 1936 Spanish Revolution.On a cosmopolitan level,I do not think it is workable. I would disagree with you about Bolshevik style vanguardism to bring forth revolution. Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci were highly (and I would say correctly)critical of any notion of vanguardism,especially the type that Lenin advocated which resembled forms of bourgeois liberalism that proceeded the 1917 revolution.

[IneptTroopr]

IMO Luxemburg actually agreed with Lenin on vanguardism, but critical of the more centralized Leninist variety. Remember that given the circumstances in Russia (all pervasive secret police force, political parties made illegal), they had to be more secretive, than say Luxemburg could in Germany.

Its also helpful to note that one of the main reasons the German Revolution of 1919 failed was because of the lack of a centralizing force behind the German workers, particularly a vanguard party.

[observationspring]

May I recommend "Dog's Heart" by Bulgakov -- there are some good insights there into the character of real vanguard.

[Redcarpet01]

@observationspring Yup, the Civil War reference is a reversal of events, pretending Lenin wasn't elitist from the beginning, even before 1917

[1844Freddy]

@IneptTroopr It's really a shame that Stalin corrupted Leninism. The USSR could never recover from the dreadful effects of Stalinism.

[OldNick612]

@IneptTroopr The Soviets were totalitarians that called themselves 'socialists' in order to gain a benefit from the connection. The West called them 'socialists' to defame the term. Both parties, in both cases, are little more than totalitarians.

[IneptTroopr]

@OldNick612 The Soviets, which were worker councils were pretty damn close to pure representative democracy. If you mean the Bolsheviks, you are definitely right in a sense, they were an authoritarian organization, even before the Party went over into clear dictatorship. I still think its too simplistic to just call them all totalitarians, as that term doesn't really have any meaning until you get into the Stalin regime, which is something even hardline Bolsheviks, like Lenin, did not desire.

[OldNick612]

@IneptTroopr It's very difficult to speak with great precision here, if only because terms have been so muddied, that was the point I was making that you missed. By the 'Soviets', I am referring to the Bolsheviks, who were for all intents and purposes, the Soviets as we use the term commonly. Lenin was no advocate of the various councils, he advocated for the revolutionary vanguard to carry the rest towards the 'Communist goal', but was in reality a power grab, little more.

[rdangelo]

This guy needs to stick to linguistics. He's at least qualified in that field.

[icedoutstreetgangsta]

Thanks for putting this up

[kurtilein3]

yes, i watched them.

but im here in germany, here we have 5 political parties in parliament at the moment, 2 in power, 3 in opposition. the media has a huge diversity, some of it financed by the gouvernment, some of it is private. the level of transparency is quite high. its as if media, corporations and politics fail to cooperate on such a scale that the politicians actually end up doing more or less what they should do: work for a better future.

[kurtilein3]

probarbly ive been simply wrong, and chomsky really only talked about the american system. and democracies like germany can quite easily turn into the kind of democracies chomsky describes, all it takes is control over the media.

but this can be opposed by having some publicly financed unguided/uncensored media, if you give them a solid, relyable budget and tell them to focus on education and quality news and prohibit external funding... just enforce some free media.

[crnogoracz]

@kurtilein3

Please don't take this as personal critique, but while Chomsky does talk specifically about American media and politics, he does talk about every power state. Believe me when I say that most Americans think about US the same way you think about Germany. That is the success they seek. The main difference is that the labor unions in European countries are much stronger.

[nivdenhoj]

Germany is a part of the EU, which is not democratic by any means. There are German elites that have a say in policy matters, but the common German has none. All you can do is to vote for the party, or coalition, that gets to receive and implement the orders given by the unelected members of the European Council/Commission. Wake up and smell the Europropaganda!

[nivdenhoj]

So what if you have 5 parties? All are more or less socialdemocratic. Whether party 1,2,3,4 or 5 wins the election, or has to form a coalition government, the power of Europe is still behind closed doors. Germany is a part of the EU, which is not a democratic power system. The elected parliamentary leaders has very little say in policy matters. Basically, you are allowed to vote for the party that gets to receive and implement orders from the elite. Wake up and smell the Europropaganda!

[boing3887]

you're right that europe's democracies (the real ones, not turkey and so on) are much stronger than the US's. but tony blair still managed to send british troops to afghanistan and iraq, so it's not perfect. and the others are right in that no power structure is immune. but you guys got something good going for sure. if only stuff over there was cheaper, like it is in america, but then again you guys seem to have more of a conscience when it comes to labor, so that's probably why stuffs expensiv

[observationspring]

You are indeed mistaken. Noam introduces the high school textbook definition, which everyone more or less familiar with, and does not dwell on it anymore. There is no need - analysis of the "real life, working democracy" is more interesting and the reason for the talk.

I did cut the talk a bit due to time limitations of YouTube. The cuts do not distort the meaning. Noam covers possible approaches to public participation in the democracy in more detail in 'Manufacturing Consent'.