Rush Concert Review

Rush "Time Machine Tour" concert on Saturday, April 2, 2011 at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, NC

There were three negatives going in.  One, I knew I had to be a ticket scalper since one of the guys I bought a ticket for backed out on me a few weeks ago.  I told him I'd try to sell his ticket at the door, but if I couldn't, he'd owe me the price of the ticket.  Two, since this show was inexplicably rescheduled from Friday, April 1 to Saturday, April 2 sometime earlier this week, it meant missing the Final Four.  Three, I knew what they were going to play before I ever even entered the coliseum. I don't think the set list has changed once since the start of the first leg.   

Rush Setlist:

1. The Spirit Of Radio 

2. Time Stand Still 

3. Presto 

4. Stick It Out 

5. Workin' Them Angels 

6. Leave That Thing Alone 

7. Faithless 

8. BU2B 

9. Freewill 

10. Marathon 

11. Subdivisions 

- - - Intermission - - -

12. Tom Sawyer 

13. Red Barchetta 

14. YYZ 

15. Limelight 

16. The Camera Eye 

17. Witch Hunt 

18. Vital Signs 

19. Caravan 

20. *Drum Solo* 

21. Closer To The Heart 

22. 2112 (Part I: Overture & Part II: The Temple of Syrinx)

23. Far Cry 

Encore:

24. La Villa Strangiato 

25. Working Man 




Three men on a stage have never produced such a sound.  It was the best classic electric rock vibe I've ever heard live.  These guys can PLAY.  Peart delivered an awesome drum solo, as I expected him to, complete with a rotating "time machine" drum kit.  This concert went on and on and on and on and on, it clocked out after at least three hours.  After Subdivisions, Geddy said "were old men… we need a break."  A twenty-minute intermission ensued.


Rush has experimented with different sounds throughout their career, and the purpose of this tour, as presented in the title of the tour, was to take the audience through the decades to experience their prowess and amazing repertoire.  Many think of Rush as a very serious band that's all music and no play, others as some type of alternative heavy metal; but they are neither.  They are a fun-loving progressive rock band, and they smiled often and danced around on stage simply having fun while displaying amazing musicianship.  The first set had some great stuff, including one of my favorites, "Leave That Thing Alone," an instrumental with some really catchy guitar work.  "The Spirit of Radio," "Time Stand Still," "Freewill," "Marathon," and "Subdivisions" are all great songs.  There was a large screen behind the stage they played films on.  Often it was a clock counting down to a particular year - usually signifying the year of a particular song release of the song getting ready to be played, or in one case, an album release.  During the intermission, the clock counted up to 1980, the year Moving Pictures was released.  At the start of the second set, "Tom Sawyer" came on and they played Moving Pictures in full.


They also played some material from their upcoming release, Clockwork Angels, notably, "BU2B," and "Caravan."


They only played the first two parts to 2112.  I would've loved to see the whole thing played.  But it is a twenty-minute song… and they played for over three hours as it was… I guess these old men can only do so much.  


But for old men, they still rock pretty hard.  

Godspeed You! Black Emperor Concert Review

Godspeed You! Black Emperor concert on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA



I made plans some time ago to go see this one with one of my cousins, which is incredibly appropriate since he's the one responsible for introducing me to the post-rock genre a few years ago, and in particular, introducing me to Godspeed You! Black Emperor.  There's not another soul I know (personally) whose musical tastes, and whose reasons for listening to music, are so similar and so compatible with mine.  With that said, this was an incredibly highly anticipated event for me.  When GY!BE announced the tour back in September I could hardly believe it.  But at the same time I figured it would happen eventually, considering the greatness of the project.  It comes as no surprise that this band has sold out nearly every venue it's been hosted by, including Athens, GA.             

I had to do some research before this show, which has been an ongoing thing for a few weeks now, not because I was unfamiliar with the band's music, but because I'm still not completely familiar with all the subnames of the songs.  I'm only real familiar with the full names of the tracks (i.e.: " Sleep," Static," "Providence," etc etc).  I know a few subnames of particular portions of tracks I like, but not all of them.

First of all, it should be known that I had to sacrifice a day of school to attend this show, which meant rescheduling an exam.  Since it was roughly a 5-hour drive from northwestern NC to Athens, and the show ended at 1:00am, it put me back around 6:00am, on a day of two exams (on top of the one I had to reschedule).  As far as school goes, the timing could't have been worse.  But it was the chance I took when I ordered these tickets before the start of the semester, and the bad timing didn't come as a surprise.  Nevertheless, nothing was stopping me from going to this show.     

Athens is a real neat town.  It reminded me a lot of Asheville or Wilmington in that it's maintained an element of natural beauty despite being metropolitan.  Plus, it just has that hipster vibe to it.  This show was right in downtown.  Upon arrival, I wasn't surprised Godspeed You! Black Emperor chose it as their one destination of the South.    

After eating at a local pizza restaurant, we walked down to the venue and got in line outside and stood there, waiting, for at least an hour.  Everyone was really friendly.  Two dudes inside the venue told us they'd driven 14 hours from Texas.  I thought "holy shit… I thought I was a hardcore Godspeed fan…" I wouldn't be surprised if the band is anti-South.  We should probably consider ourselves lucky they managed one date as far south as Georgia.

I was surprised they had merch for sale.  I figured the band was anti-merch as well.  I remember reading somewhere their philosophy was "make your own Godspeed You! Black Emperor t-shirt."  They're so anti-capitalism and consumerism.  I'll bet Constellation forced them to sell some stuff.  They had two t-shirts for sale at $20 each, all their albums, and a beautiful glossy silkscreen poster for $20.  I went with the poster.  (See picture below)

As far as standing position in front of the stage, we were pretty close to the front.  There might've been two rows of people in front of us?  The most irritating part of the night was crowd chatter during the opening act.  The opener was an individual artist who played multiple guitars.  He was actually really impressive and technically proficient.  His playing reminded me of Trace Bundy (except he probably wasn't quite that good), with more wailing and capo switches.  He was extremely kind and gracious considering the rudeness from his audience.    

Godspeed You! Black Emperor Setlist:

1. Hope Drone

2. Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

3. Gathering Storm

4. "Murray Ostril"  ...They Don't Sleep Anymore on the Beach

5. Monheim

6. 9-15-00 (outro) / The Albanian

7. Atomic Clock

8. Chart #3

9. World Police and Friendly Fire

10. Slow Moving Trains

11. The Cowboy

12. Moya

13. Blaise Bailey Finnegan III

14. String Loop Manufactured During Downpour… [Outro]

The only one I'm not positive about is the outro to 9-15-00 played after Monheim.  They played a lot of interludes in-between songs, a lot of which were hard to decipher, and they ran together.  They definitely played something between Monheim and Atomic clock.  It might have been a snippet of The Albanian, a track I'm fairly unfamiliar with, but I'm not confident.  They might have mixed 9-15-00 and The Albanian together (which I feel was probably the case, but again, not sure).  One thing became apparent after seeing this band live, and my cousin commented on it as well.  Just like A Silver Mt. Zion, this band is incredibly influenced by free jazz.  A lot of their interludes were very chaotic and uncoerced, much like in free jazz.  I think the chaotic aspect of their music is probably symbolic to their anarchistic tendencies.  A lot of their songs disintegrate from something beautiful into something chaotic and tumultuous.  They did this even more so live.  Blaise Bailey Finnegan III, at around the 14:00 or 15:00 minute mark, went into something highly varied from what it sounded like on Slow Riot.  The intro, Hope Drone, is another example, as is virtually all the interludes that consisted of tons of feedback and reverb.    

I've come to realize nearly everything this band does is done to convey a message.  Whether it's the monologues or voice tracks (and the music that encompasses them), the song titles, the sound that's meant to evoke a particular emotion, the artwork… nothing is inconsequential.  The film loops are no exception.  The films played during the set were fantastic.  Nicely contrasted.  My favorites were the ones, I think played during Moya, that consisted of ancient script-type writing, and even occultist symbols.  Some also looked to be Hebrew.  Others included typed texts from war documents.  They flashed so quickly I could't make out what they said, for the ones in English that is.  I only saw single words as I focused in, and that was enough to let me know they were documents regarding wars or foreign policy of some type (very fitting for BBF3).  

I also liked how the band did absolutely no talking during the show.  One track ran into another.  It was like one long 2 1/2 hour cohesive piece of music, woven together.

As I expected, they sounded amazing.  Monheim and Moya, in my opinion, were the best played tracks of the night.  My cousin liked what they did with BBF3.  I honestly couldn't have asked for a better setlist.  I'm not sure there's a single "bad" part to any Godspeed song.  It's just some are better than others, and they played a lot of good ones last night.  Not to boast, but I think Athens might've gotten the best setlist of the tour so far.  The only song missing that would've been amazing to hear, that they've played at a few previous shows (DC for sure), is The Sad Mafioso.  But the set ran well over two hours as is.  It was very strategic for them to put on that recording of String Loop Manufactured During Downpour as an outro.  It prevented the audience from being able to ask for an encore.  They slowly left the stage one by one, waving to the audience as they went, while we listened to "where are you going?" over and over along with the droning of distorted guitars.  It was awesome.    

Just to critique though, there were some variances I wasn't crazy about.  One of them was Efrim's slight switching of the notes played during Chart #3.  Recall the notes of the gentle atmospheric strumming of the guitar while we listen to that insane man describe his dream about passing through corridors and dark serpentines and penetrating to the most high god.  Yeah, Efrim didn't play those notes as they were on the album.  Also, there was no trumpet or French horn in Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven.  That one's pretty picky, but it's something I noticed; I'm sure there's nothing they could have done about it.  I don't think any of them even play horns.  Also, during the same track (Lift Yr. Skinny Fists), maybe it was just me, but the drum beat seemed a little different.                    

During World Police and Friendly Fire

During Moya

the 40 Watt Club  

My beautiful, glossy, silkscreen tour poster

Simply put, I've never been to a show like this before.  It was absolutely fantastic.  If I didn't have school, I'd travel long distances to see it again.  The show is unique because the band is unique.  There is no other band that even comes close to being similar to Godspeed You! Black Emperor.  Now that I've seen them in concert, I can spend my days yearning for a new album.        

   

Caspian Concert Review

Caspian concert on Wednesday, March 9, 2011 at Snug Harbor in Charlotte, NC


So far this year has been a pleasant surprise for concert goers of my type in the NC region.  3 awesome post-rock concerts have/are hitting the southeast in a 4-week span: Caspian, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Explosions in the Sky.    On top of that, Rush has launched a second leg of their Time Machine Tour which is hitting the eastern part of the U.S. starting in late March.  All that, combined with a road trip up to Cleveland to see Agalloch, is making for a damn fine start to 2011.  


I went to this show with two buds, neither of whom cared about seeing Caspian (probably because they've never heard of Caspian, and, I'm not sure they're fond of this genre of music), but both of whom were gladly willing to pay the low price of $8 a ticket to ride down to Charlotte with me and make an evening of it.


The venue was one I'd never been to before, called Snug Harbor. It was tiny. I probably could've sprinted the length of the room in about 2 seconds flat. All the employees looked like pirates. Skull & crossbone flags hung all over the place. Regardless of its size, it was a neat atmosphere. I was worried about a low turnout at first. When we walked in there not long after the doors had opened it was deserted. A few pirates stood around and drunk beer, there were the occasional stragglers at the bar (the type of which were obviously oblivious to whatever music was about to be played), and one woman voiced opposition when I demanded the bar tender change the channel from CNN to the Big East basketball tournament. By the time Caspian took the stage though it had filled in. I'm glad; I wanted Caspian's first show in Charlotte to have a decent turnout. Charlotte's never been the place for much of a post-rock scene.



The opening bands were't very impressive. Chiaroscuro was the more impressive of the two, being bland post-rock. Very little sound variance (everything they played had the same structure: start off soft and melodic and quickly turn into something more heavy and less melodic). They weren't bad bad though. Native was much worse. They were a post-hardcore sounding band with screaming vocals and a bunch of young kids playing instruments. Considering their age, the instruments were all right, but the vocals made the band near unlistenable. I tried to drown them out sitting at the bar watching the Marquette vs West Virginia game.




Caspian took the stage around 11:00pm or so, or maybe a tad later.





Caspian Setlist:



1. Of Foam and Wave

2. Malacoda

3. Moksha

4. Quovis

5. Further Up

6. Further In

7. The Raven

8. Sycamore





I was pretty happy with what they played. Obviously, I've never seen them live before so it's not like I had to worry about seeing repeats. Moksha and Sycamore are two of Caspian's best songs, so I was happy with those. I really would've liked to hear Brombie or Concrescence or Loft or Last Rites though. They had a decent variety of material from all their releases. They didn't play an encore, which I thought was a bit strange. The crowd kept yelling for one after Sycamore, but Philip was like "the bass is broken" and "we don't usually play encores," and so they didn't. It would've been amazing to go out on Brombie or Last Rites. Their sound was great. Beautiful guitar tone - especially for the beginning of Sycamore. The tone catered to their softer material. Concrescence would've sounded amazing. I was standing left of the stage right at the front, so it was all in my face. Very emotional show.




The crowd was pretty decent except for one drunk guy up front who kept thrashing around like he was at a Slayer concert.





Overall though, great performance by Caspian. 

Bahrain Implements Martial Law

Given the current situation in the Middle East, I'll come back to At War With Asia later.  There are two prominent types of governments in the Middle East: monarchies and republics.  The monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, etc) tend to be richer oil producing states.  The republics (Egypt and Tunisia, formerly secular republics, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, etc) tend to be poorer states, usually with larger populations, and not oil producing states.  The only theocracy in the Middle East is Iran, though Saudi Arabia is close.  To give an idea of fiscal differentiation, a week or so ago Kuwait paid each of its citizens $3,000… a roundabout stimulus package type way of saying "please don't follow suit and protest the monarchy, we don't want our country to go to hell in a handbasket like every other country in the region."  Could Egypt afford to do this? Could Tunisia afford to do this?  Could Yemen afford to do this?

Here in the last day or so Bahrain went on military lockdown, its leaders banned public gatherings and sent tanks to the streets killing some anti-government protestors.  Thousands across the region defied authorities and marched to the streets in Libya and Yemen, in the same fashion of political unrest that we saw succeed in toppling regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.  

Some of this revolt in the Arab world is, for the most part, inconsequential to the U.S., however, Egypt and Bahrain are hardly inconsequential.  The United States' Fifth Fleet naval force for the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Arabian Sea, is located in Bahrain… a vital component of the U.S. Navy.  In fact, because of this, Bahrain is a key part of U.S. counterbalance to Iran.

The unrest is jeopardizing the future of a vital U.S. ally.  The base isn't the most important U.S. base in the Middle East, but it does oversee all the naval operations.  Due to a Sunni conflict (as I understand it), Bahrain is susceptible to become subdue to Iranian influence, which could be disastrous to both the U.S. and the world's oil markets (Bahrain is an oil state).  Initial U.S. reactions to the deaths of the anti-government protestors, as caused by Bahrain's implementation of marshall law, have been relatively quiet.  But recently the Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, expressed deep concern over the event.  A U.S. State Department spokesman said "this is something that the Bahrain government needs to address in greater fashion" and "the U.S. is expressing full support for the rights of these people to express themselves."

This wake of unrest in the Middle East was immediately predictable after the overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and especially when protests started in Egypt.  These next few months in Egypt, and in the region as a whole, are going to be most interesting.  This might be the most substantial amount of revolution the region has seen since the fall of the Ottoman empire.  

Indochina and the American Crisis

Chomsky analysis month continues.  At War With Asia, Chomsky's second political book, delves further into U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia.  British economist Joan Robinson described the American crusade against communism in the following terms, as quoted in the book by Chomsky:

"It is obvious enough that the United States' crusade against Communism is a campaign against development. By means of it the American people have been led to acquiesce in the maintenance of a huge war machine and its use by threat or actual force to try to suppress every popular movement that aims to overthrow ancient or modern tyranny and begin to find a way to overcome poverty and establish national self-respect. In those countries whose governments have been prepared to accept American support, ‘aid’ is given in a form which may do more to inhibit development than to promote it.”

Chomsky also quotes John K. Fairbank:

"Our fear of Communism, partly as an expression of our general fear of the future, will continue to inspire us to aggressive anti-Communist policies in Asia and elsewhere, [and] the American people will be led to think and may honestly believe that the support of anti-Communist governments in Asia will somehow defend the American way of life. This line of American policy will lead to American aid to establish regimes which attempt to suppress the popular movements in Indonesia, Indochina, the Philippines, and China…. Thus, after setting out to fight Communism in Asia, the American people will be obliged in the end to fight the peoples of Asia.

This American aggression abroad will be associated with an increasing trend toward anti-Communist authoritarianism within the United States, which its victims will call fascism and which may eventually make it impossible to have discussions like this one today. This American fascism will come, if it comes, because American liberals have joined the American public in a fear of Communism from abroad rather than fascism at home as the chief totalitarian menace."

Both these quotes depict perfectly the opposition liberals took to American action against communism.  Joan Robinson is a famous Marxian economist.  She wrote one essay in 1942 concentrated solely on Marxism, trying to revive this aspect of his legacy. Regarding her stated passage above, yes, we can say that American opposition to the Communists is an inadvertent effort to oppose the communists who think their ideology will "develop" their nations (in North Korea and North Vietnam, for instance).  And yes, we can say that many non-communist U.S. backed governments, that we supported because of their opposition to communism, were tyrannies.  At the time communism was considered, by some at least, a system that promoted development (by select factions of the left, mostly).  However, after the Fall of Saigon and during the post-Vietnam years, when South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos fell to communism, as well as communist states outside Southeast Asia, hindsight tells us communist systems hardly succeed in "developing their respective nations."

As for the U.S. inhibiting development, I think there's something to this.  It was certainly the case in South Vietnam.  Had there been no reunification of North and South Vietnam, development in South Vietnam would have been inhibited sheerly because of American/Saigon Government/Viet Cong destruction, most of which was American.  We saw similar instances of violent U.S. opposition to communism  in Central America in the 1980's, leaving Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala in a close to devastated state.


Also, history has proved, very well, America hasn't become a fascist state.  And fascism was never the "chief totalitarian menace." History reserved that honor for Stalinism.              
      
There was an argument as well, at the time, that there was no differentiation between American imperialism and Stalinism, and that America behaved no differently than the Stalinists, well… I think that's a bit of a stretch (to be modest).  More people were killed in Vietnam and Cambodia post-1975, after the war ended, than during. America isn't accountable for that.  The pattern that's intrinsic to Stalinism is: 1) the Stalinists come into power, and 2) they purge their nation of all actual and potential opposition.  We haven't an ounce of that pattern in America.  There was no anti-war movement in Russia under Stalin.

Chomsky states in his book:

“I mean to suggest that the Cold war is highly functional for the American elite as well as for its Soviet counterpart, who, in a similar way, sends its armies into Czechoslovakia to ward off Western Imperialism. It serves to proved an ideology for empire and to mobilize support for the government subsidized system of military state capitalism. It is predictable, then, that opportunities to end the Cold War will be side-stepped, and that challenges to Cold war ideology will be bitterly resisted.”

Chomsky has preconceived ideas about America's liberal democratization, and makes a bold cynical prediction in writing this. This is basically a statement saying the Cold War will continue indefinitely because it supports both liberal democracy and soviet communism. The prediction was proved false in 1989 with the failure of the Soviets, 19 years after At War With Asia.  However, Chomsky's rationale backing that theory isn't too far gone.  He believed American capitalist self-interest would drive the need for the continuation of the Soviet Union, that the United States, economically, actually benefitted from the USSR.  I'm no economist, but that theory makes sense.  When Reagan addressed Gorbachev, I guess a few other factors were weighing in.

Back to the complicated situation in Indochina in 1970.  There was a time when America justified  bombing Laos because it was claimed that North Vietnam had 50,000 troops in northern Laos.  Chomsky tells an interesting story regarding one of his visits to Laos in March of 1970.  Wanting documented proof of the claimed 50,000 troops, he visited the American Embassy and asked to speak to the CIA Representative/political officer, whom he asked if he could see some background material on the alleged troops.  The CIA Rep gave him piles of documentation, which he read through to find evidence that there was one North Vietnamese battalion of maybe 2,500 soldiers somewhere up in northern Laos.  The rest was a fabrication.

Chomsky also touches again on the anti-war movement (which I went over in the previous article), criticizing it because most of the condemnation that fueled the opposition and the protests was centered around America's bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia.  There was practically no condemnation over the bombing of the South, which by 1965 was even more extensive than the bombing of the North, at least according to Bernard Fall (a correspondent and intellectual of the war, in fact, he's cited by Robert McNamera, the Secretary of Defense under JFK and Johnson, to be the one non-government person cited as a military historian of Vietnam).  According to Fall the bombing of the South was at triple the scale of the bombing of the North.  In fact, I'm not sure how many people even know about the bombing of the South.  In 1962 Kennedy launched outright aggression against South Vietnam, authorizing bombings and napalm and such.  But there were no protests over this.  The protests didn't start until the bombing of the North.

TRB, the editor of The New Republic magazine, states:

"The moral pull for the U.S. to go on rescue missions will always be enormous.  There are dozens of such spots.  Our conscious aches for them.  But our capacity?  It is probably limited…"

The lesson he draws from Vietnam is that the U.S.'s capacity to aid foreign countries from tyranny is limited.  This is a rescue mission we should not have undertaken.  He surely represents a fair segment of American opinion, but ultimately saw our intervention in Vietnam as a tragedy.  He also says "what is our primary duty?  Is it to the South Vietnamese who might be massacred if we quit?  Or to the 150-200 American boys who lose their lives weekly if we don't withdraw?" What of those massacred by American military actions?

I'm unaware of any historian of Indochina during the 1960's more informed than Bernard Fall.  I wish I had the will to get through Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, but man, what a doozy.      

American Power and the New Mandarins

This marked the beginning of Chomsky's embarking from linguistics to politics.  Written in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Chomsky, in a collection of adamant essays, depicts at the very least the evil impulses of American foreign policy and at the most America as a whole.  While this book is very political, the application of Chomsky's left skewed ideals to his political ideals (when he says things like U.S. policy was to destroy the nationalist movement in South Vietnamese peasantry rather than to defend them from the communists) aren't nearly as intriguing as the morality that accompanies these ideals.  And in this book we get, among other things, a great deal of morality.  This was one of the most interesting aspects of the 1960's.  There was a massive movement in opposition to the war because of this feeling of "guilt," which Chomsky touches on in his book.  In fact, this was the first real anti-war movement in America.  We had that marginal core peace movement that had existed prior to Vietnam, largely based in religious beliefs (unitarianism), that opposed Kennedy's failure to halt nuclear proliferation, but it failed to gain massive popularity until the Cold War era.  Any other peace unions that existed in the 1950's were more liberal than radical.  By the mid 1960's, the opposition was rampant.  Even Martin Luther King expressed support for the anti-war movement.

The way I see it, there were two types of opposition to Vietnam:

One, and this one pertains to the intellectual class, there was opposition because the war was not winnable, it was expensive, politically it was a bind, and it was costing too many American lives.  The implication of this is, had the U.S. crushed the Vietnamese resistance without significant loss of American life, in which case the war might've been more popular and thus not as tactically difficult politically, these intellectuals would have supported the war (with Vietnamese life being irrelevant).  

Two, and this is the one I already touched on, there was a massive youth movement in opposition to the war because of this feeling of guilt.  American atrocities committed during this war, to my knowledge, are unparalleled.  At the time (late 1960's), there were two possible outcomes for Vietnam.  One: Withdrawal.  Two: The destruction of Vietnam as a social and cultural entity.  This is just one reason for the 1960's counter-culture movement.  People were starting to ask "where exactly does America stand in the world?"  And it was this feeling of guilt, of emotional and moral falseness, largely, that drove this opposition.

Chomsky addresses the issue of morality very closely in his book, saying towards the "moral American class" that there's no ground for elitism and moral superiority because anyone who expressed opposition to the war did so long after opposition should've been initialized.  He even says "I hate that I didn't come to this position earlier" and "no one who involved him/herself in anti-war activities as late as 1965, as I did, has any reason for pride or satisfaction."  Even those who expressed opposition to the policy in the mid 50's didn't engage in anti-war protests until the mid 60's, by which time Vietnam had been underway for 10 years.

Also suggesting a moral implication, there's a point in the book where he says something like "aside from any point of politics" … then goes on to argue the issue.  

Another interesting aspect to Chomsky's argument, is, unlike many radical critics, he does not build his case against U.S. foreign policy by magnifying the innocence or goodness of those who oppose us internationally.  Rather, he argues brilliantly against perhaps the most common misperception of international American intervention: that our interventionist policies are merely a defense reaction to Russian or Chinese aggression, that we intervene only to defend the people of Asia (or Africa, or Latin-America) from the evils of communist totalitarianism.       

There's one section juxtaposing Vietnam events with the Spanish Civil War and Japanese imperial politics during the 1930's (policies such as the "naked expression" clause).  He argues that Naked Expression is plausible only by disregarding precisely the claims of national self-interest and the right to protect a puppet government (Manchurian) from Chinese domination.  This is a textbook perfect analogy to the American justification of Vietnam.  However, Chomsky does not claim that his view of either pre-World War II Japanese policy or of the Spanish Civil War is the only possible one, which differs from Vietnam because, according to Chomsky, by the mid to late 1960's Vietnam was about as arguable as Auschwitz.

However, beyond justification of American intentions in Vietnam the analogy isn't quite as strong.  Chomsky's essay on Japanese imperialism of the 1930's is overt in its effort to describe the U.S.'s foreign policy goals with the same terminology used to describe Japan's foreign policy goals.  This analogical approach may be intended to demonstrate the universal evil of imperialism, whether practiced by the Japanese in the 1930's or the American's in the 1960's, but Chomsky's prose style is rarely felicitous.  And that's significant because it's something one would expect in a trenchant, straight forward, well-organized, direct political essay.  But Chomsky's material is extremely chaotic and unorganized, thus leaving the reader somehow with the bizarre notion that Chomsky's defending Japanese imperialism of the 1930's, a position that even the most severe critic of American Far Eastern policy prior to the second World War would be reluctant to take. 

The essay on Spain is both more ambitious and more significant.  He demonstrates most convincingly that the anarchist revolution was misrepresented towards the Spanish struggle.  Here he makes the analogy that Spain's crushing of the anarchists was far more important than defeating Franco's rebels, analogous to the West's crushing of the communists.  Or so i make of it.

The other rhetoric used, besides the focus on morality, was aimed at emotion.  He describes the war as "barbarous," "obscene," "butchery," and "a depraved act by weak and miserable men" … the sort of terms that appeal to the emotions rather than the intelligence.  He claims the war is no more debatable than the Italian war in Abyssinia or the Russian suppression of Hungarian freedom.  These aforementioned emotional arguments, I think, only succeed in further convincing those who are already convinced.  Those simply looking for guidance, or those new to studying the issue, will probably just be deeply outraged.  I quickly get fed up with overly emotive-type argumentation.  Chomsky goes way overboard in my opinion, saying things like "what America needs is a kind of denazification."  Surely there are better things to say, especially coming from a competent scholar and linguist.   

  

Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Intellectuals

"If it is correct, as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of human nature is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effect of coercive institutions, then, of course, it will follow that a decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized. That means trying to overcome the elements of repression and oppression and destruction and coercion that exist in any existing society, ours for example, as a historical residue.

Now any form of coercion or repression, any form of autocratic control of some domain of existence, let's say, private ownership of capital or state control of some aspects of human life, any such autocratic restriction on some area of human endeavor, can be justified, if at all, only in terms of the need for subsistence, or the need for survival, or the need for defense against some horrible fate or something of that sort. It cannot be justified intrinsically. Rather it must be overcome and eliminated.

And I think that, at least in the technologically advanced societies of the West we are now certainly in a position where meaningless drudgery can very largely be eliminated, and to the marginal extent that it's necessary, can be shared among the population; where centralized autocratic control of, in the first place, economic institutions, by which I mean either private capitalism or state totalitarianism or the various mixed forms of state capitalism that exist here and there, has become a destructive vestige of history.

They are all vestiges that have to be overthrown, eliminated in favor of direct participation in the form of workers' councils or other free associations that individuals will constitute themselves for the purpose of their social existence and their productive labour.

Now a federated, decentralized system of free associations, incorporating economic as well as other social institutions, would be what I refer to as anarcho-syndicalism; and it seems to me that this is the appropriate form of social organization for an advanced technological society, in which human beings do not have to be forced into the position of tools, of cogs in the machine. There is no longer any social necessity for human beings to be treated as mechanical elements in the productive process; that can be overcome and we must overcome it by a society of freedom and free association, in which the creative urge that I consider intrinsic to human nature, will in fact be able to realize itself in whatever way it will."

--Noam Chomsky
For the full debate between Chomsky and Foucault, see:
http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm
(and it's a great debate)


This debate, if it's fair to call it a debate, regarding human nature, boils down to whether or not meaning, epistemology, and creativity, among other things, are intrinsic to it. Chomsky believes that they are; that is, he believes humanity has a need to inquire on such things. Foucault does not deny the possibility that they are, but he does deny Chomsky's ability to define human nature, in any sense, because Chomsky's definition will invariably be ethnocentric (as will anyone's). Foucault uses culture to explain culture, as it exists here and there or now and then; Chomsky uses culture to explain reality. (I know… Nietzsche wouldn't approve)

Now, in theory, anarcho-syndicalism is indistinguishable from libertarian socialism. Chomsky has a long history of regarding states as power centers, and has expressed that "no state meets even the minimal level of morality," thus the reason for his anarchist tendencies. But the more interesting part of Chomsky's argument is not necessarily his favoring a stateless society, but how he intends to get there. Chomsky has argued that it would be a mistake to attempt to eliminate the state in the short run, and that the first step towards achieving this would be to strengthen the state, because it's needed as a check on the power of large corporations. Now, the question that should be asked, or rather, the point that should be made, is why exactly is this the case given that the power of large corporations is mostly state driven. The beneficiary of a more powerful state is going to be the same corporate elite Chomsky's trying to oppose.

Chomsky is very Marxist inspired as well. He argues that the best transition would be derived from a war waged against the ruling class by the proletariat (or so that's what I make of what he says), and that this is necessary to lead to a more just society, in which the state will dissolve and in which the proletariat will be a universal class. He argues that the need for a violent revolution, and those who argue the need for a violent and bloody revolution, argue so falsely, and that there's no sense in a violent revolution, especially should there be no future justification (which would be liberation). He says that if the attainment of power by the proletariat leads to human relations being destroyed, he wouldn't want the proletariat to take power, and that the only reason for wanting such a thing is because one thinks some fundamental human values will be achieved, or realized, by that transfer of power. Then Foucault makes the point, in this case the point that I'd make and have made in the past, that there's a probable chance when the proletariat takes power it will exert violence towards the once ruling class, and in effect become what it opposed. One would definitely think that should there exist a stateless society, someone will capitalize on the opportunity to dictate that society. Historical experience tells us that a violent and bloody dictatorship of the proletariat, when controlled by self-appointed representatives of a vanguard party, has at its end this society simply being ruled by the vanguards.

Chomsky is familiar with Bakunin I'm sure, but I haven't heard him address Bakunin's criticism of Marx. How can the working class ever take over an institution as massive as the state without violence?

To digress a bit, I think Chomsky is great on foreign policy, propaganda and the media networks, the U.S. power structure, etc… but there's definitely an economic side to achieving the dictatorship of the proletariat, and economics is not Chomsky's strong suit. Also, Chomsky is a state-employed anarchist. He works for MIT, which receives most all its funding from the state. This makes me question his status of an anarchist… aren't these folks supposed to have mohawks and "walk the earth," living in emancipation from a power structure?

In regards to anarcho-syndicalism/libertarian socialism, representing his side I tend to gravitate towards, he goes on to say…

"I think it would be a great shame to put aside entirely the somewhat more abstract and philosophical task of trying to draw the connections between a concept of human nature that gives full scope to freedom and dignity and creativity and other fundamental human characteristics, and to relate that to some notion of social structure in which those properties could be realized and in which meaningful human life could take place. If we are thinking of social transformation or social revolution, though it would be absurd, of course, to try to sketch out in detail the goal that we are hoping to reach, still we should know something about where we think we are going, and such a theory may tell it to us."

There are a few intellectual tasks: One, we must envision a just society in which there exists the basic minimal moral standards of a humane egalitarian existence. Two, we must realize that this society will most likely never exist, save that there's a drastic metamorphosis of humanity (in which case we already have this ideal society envisioned). Three, and this is probably the most important, we must recognize the negative forces at work in the world, which includes looking in the mirror at our own society... the power and oppression and terrorism and destruction... and through what seems to be the most reasonable approach, via opposition and reducing the equanimity, we must fight these forces.

(I feel like now's the time where I'm supposed to rear up on my horse with my sword in the air and lead my troops into battle)


To conclude with one last quote...

"If we have the choice between trusting in centralised power to make the right decision in that matter, or trusting in free associations of libertarian communities to make that decision, I would rather trust the latter. And the reason is that I think that they can serve to maximise decent human instincts, whereas a system of centralised power will tend in a general way to maximise one of the worst of human instincts, namely the instinct of rapaciousness, of destructiveness, of accumulating power to oneself and destroying others. It's a kind of instinct which does arise and functions in certain historical circumstances, and I think we want to create the kind of society where it is likely to be repressed and replaced by other and more healthy instincts."

Human, All Too Human

Nietzsche wrote:

"Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment."