Experimental Essay The DialecticThe purpose of this paper is to.docx

Experimental Essay: The Dialectic
The purpose of this paper is to experiment with a style of essay
that you’ve probably never written before: The Dialectic. We’ll
be testing Foucault’s idea about polemics in order to push
ourselves to consider and explore multiple conflicting
perspectives in a single paper.
The basic premise is that you will write a series of thesis,
antithesis arguments - point and counterpoint paragraphs. You
will first argue a side of a discussion and then take up the
opposing side, eloquently crafting a rigorous response to your
own ideas.
Your essay should explore the concepts we will be discussing in
class, so if you’ve been doing the homework, you already have
some arguments to work from. If you would like something
more specific to work from, the Justice discussions and
comments that your peers will be posting on course studio are a
good start. In addition to this, you should also read through
your notes from our class discussion about the predictions from
the Constitutional Convention 1787. Can we make an argument
that the poor indirectly sell their votes to the rich? Does the
wealthiest class of America really dictate society? Do the poor
impose upon the freedom and the property of the rich through
voting? In what ways can private interests manipulate public
opinions and widely held beliefs? Who is influencing whom?
Who is responsible for the actions and behaviors of masses and
of individuals?
This dialectic should not look like the typical childhood debate:
“YES. NO. YES. NO.” You should not simply state a side and
then write the inverse. Instead, you should invent the most
compelling defense for both sides. Where students misstep here
is in the unfortunate habit of writing weak counterpoints -
something “stupid” that’s easy to rip apart. Right? We’ve all
done this in essays that require counterpoints. Why that doesn’t

work for this essay is that it would essentially mean that HALF
of your essay is intentionally “stupid”... This doesn’t make for a
good college paper. Instead, you must argue both sides so well
that the reader cannot tell which is actually your own position.
To build this paper over the next two weeks, you should be
exploring as many points (and counterpoints) as you can
imagine in your homework assignments. In your final essay, I
would like you to try to compile what you believe to be your
best ideas.
This paper cannot be a summary - you should not simply have a
series of points restating and summarizing the arguments that
you’ve pulled from the various texts. Instead, you should use
what you think is interesting from the text as a way to launch
into a discussion of your own brilliant ideas.
Format: double-spaced, times new roman typeface, 12-point
font, with 1 inchmargins.
The paper must be 1000 - 1400 words in length.
Peer Review Draft Due : May 27
Final Draft Due : May 29 via email by 11:54pm
REFLECTION PIECE: You will also be writing a 300 word
reflection on your writing. In this piece you should reflect on
your experience of writing in this experimental form. If it was
an “experiment,” what would you say you learned about
reading, writing and thinking? This reflection will not be
included in the final word count of the essay.
Case Study HW
Note: This case study has two sections. Each section must be
answered with minimum 3-4 pages. All instructions must be
followed carefully. Your answer must be 100% original. All
references must be cited in APA.
Section A: CPA’s Legal Liability when Accepting an
Engagement
You are a partner in the Denver office of a national public
accounting firm. During the audit of Mountain Resources, you

learn that this audit client is negotiating to sell some of its
unproved oil and gas properties to SuperFund, a large
investment company. SuperFund is an audit client of your New
York office.
Mountain Resources acquired these properties several years ago
at a cost of $15 million. The company drilled several
exploratory wells but found no developable resources. Last
year, you and Mountain Resources agreed that the value of these
unproved properties had been “impaired” as defined in
Accounting Standards Codification, section 932-360-35-11. The
company wrote the carrying value of the properties down to an
estimated realizable value of $9 million and recognized a $6
million loss. You concurred with this treatment and issued an
unqualified auditor’s report on the company’s financial
statements.
You are now amazed to learn that the sales price for these
properties being discussed by Mountain Resources and
SuperFund is $42 million. You cannot understand why
SuperFund would pay such a high price and you wonder what
representations Mountain Resources may have made to
SuperFund concerning these properties. The management of
Mountain Resources declines to discuss the details of the
negotiations with you, calling them “quite delicate” and
correctly pointing out that the future sale of these properties
will not affect the financial statements currently under audit.
Instructions:
1. Summarize the arguments for advising SuperFund (through
your New York office) that you consider the properties grossly
overpriced at $42 million.
2. Summarize the arguments for remaining silent and not
offering any advice to SuperFund on this matter.
3. Express your personal opinion as to the course of action you
should take. Indicate which arguments from part (a) or part (b)
most influenced your decision.
4. Section A of your Portfolio Project should be 3-4 pages. For

Section A, use two outside academic sources other than the
textbook, course materials, or other information provided as
part of the course materials. All references must be cited in
APA.
Section B:Accepting an Engagement
On October 21, Rand & Brink, a CPA firm, was retained by
Suncraft Appliance Corporation to perform an audit for the year
ended December 31. A month later, James Minor, president of
the corporation, invited the CPA firm’s partners, George Rand
and Alice Brink, to attend a meeting of all officers of the
corporation. Mr. Minor opened the meeting with the following
statement:
“All of you know that we are not in a very liquid position, and
our October 31 balance sheet shows it. We need to raise some
outside capital in January, and our December 31 financial
statements (both balance sheet and income statement) must look
reasonably good if we’re going to make a favorable impression
upon lenders or investors. I want every officer of this company
to do everything possible during the next month to ensure that,
at December 31, our financial statements look as strong as
possible, especially our current position and our earnings.
“I have invited our auditors to attend this meeting so they will
understand the reason for some year-end transactions that might
be a little unusual. It is essential that our financial statements
carry the auditors’ approval, or we’ll never be able to get the
financing we need. Now, what suggestions can you offer?”
The vice president for sales was first to offer suggestions: “I
can talk some of our large customers into placing some orders
in December that they wouldn’t ordinarily place until the first
part of next year. If we get those extra orders shipped, it will
increase this year’s earnings and also increase our current
assets.”
The vice president in charge of production commented: “We can
ship every order we have now and every order we get during
December before the close of business on December 31. We’ll

have to pay some overtime in our shipping department, but
we’ll try not to have a single unshipped order on hand at year-
end. Also, we could overship some orders, and the customers
wouldn’t make returns until January.”
The controller spoke next: “If there are late December orders
from customers that we can’t actually ship, we can just label the
merchandise as sold and bill the customers with December 31
sales invoices. Also, there are always some checks from
customers dated December 31 that don’t reach us until
January—some as late as January 10. We can record all those
customers’ checks bearing dates of late December as part of our
December 31 cash balance.”
The treasurer offered the following suggestions: “I owe the
company $50,000 on a call note I issued to buy some of our
stock. I can borrow $50,000 from my mother-in-law about
Christmastime and repay my note to the company. However, I’ll
have to borrow the money from the company again early in
January, because my mother-in-law is buying a condo and will
need the $50,000 back by January 15.
“Another thing we can do to improve our current ratio is to
write checks on December 31 to pay most of our current
liabilities. We might even wait to mail the checks for a few days
or mail them to the wrong addresses. That will give time for the
January cash receipts to cover the December 31 checks.”
The vice president of production made two final suggestions:
“Some of our inventory, which we had tentatively identified as
obsolete, does not represent an open-and-shut case of being
unsalable. We could defer any write-down until next year.
Another item is some machinery we have ordered for delivery in
December. We could instruct the manufacturer not to ship the
machines and not to bill us before January.”
After listening to these suggestions, the president, James Minor,
spoke directly to Rand and Brink, the auditors. “You can see
I’m doing my best to give you full information and cooperation.
If any of these suggested actions would prevent you from giving
a clean bill of health to our year-end statements, I want to know

about it now so we can avoid doing anything that would keep
you from issuing an unqualified audit report. I know you’ll be
doing a lot of preliminary work here before December 31, but
I’d like for you not to bill us before January. Will you please
give us your reactions as to what has been said in this
meeting?”
Instructions:
1. Put yourself in the role of Rand & Brink, CPAs, and evaluate
separately each suggestion made in the meeting. What general
term is applicable to most of the suggested actions?
2. Could you assure the client that an unqualified audit report
would be issued if your recommendations were followed on all
the matters discussed? Explain.
3. Would the discussion in this meeting cause you to withdraw
from the engagement?
4. Section B of your Portfolio Project should be 3-4 pages. For
Section B, use two outside academic sources other than the
textbook, course materials, or other information provided as
part of the course materials. All references must be cited in
APA.
Society without a State / Murray N. Rothbard (1975)
In attempting to outline how a "society without a state" — that
is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would
first
like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this
approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such
defense or
protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am
simply smuggling the state back into society in another form,
and that
therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not
"really" anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in

an
endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the
beginning that I define the state as that institution which
possesses one or
both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it
acquires its income by the physical coercion known as
"taxation"; and (2)
it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the
provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given
territorial area.
An institution not possessing either of these properties is not
and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the
other
hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal
possibility for coercive aggression against the person or
property of an
individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very
being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private
property
through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of
defense service from its territory, and all of the other
depredations and
coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of
individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two
characteristics have been possessed by what is generally
acknowledged to be
states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of
physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory
monopoly of defense
services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly
conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by
private, non-state
institutions, and indeed such services have historically been
supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to

the state
is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often
been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not
necessarily
imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts,
arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and
highways.
Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all
physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is
not
inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist
position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all
physical coercion
invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the
state is the only institution or organization in society which
regularly and
systematically acquires its income through the use of physical
coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their
income
voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and
services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary
gifts or
donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from
purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do
not
come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force
me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical
Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent
me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so;
only the
state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay
its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has
its
very being by means of coercive depredations on private

property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by
claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or
membership
in the APA is in some way "coercive." Anyone who is still
unhappy with this use of the term "coercion" can simply
eliminate the word
from this discussion and substitute for it "physical violence or
the threat thereof," with the only loss being in literary style
rather than
in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to
do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the
regularized
institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its
coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions
upon
society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of
pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the
mass
murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in
the words of Albert Jay Nock, "claims and exercises a monopoly
of
crime" over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning
the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists
"assume that all people are good" and that without the state no
crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes
that with
the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge,
cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of
crime will
then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the

basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism
profess —
and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I
certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers
that mankind
is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal
tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which
maximizes the
tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes
both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and
the
criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed
the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all
manner of
antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a
massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of
crime can do
nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether
anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are
"good" in the
sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing
their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of
protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off
chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be
peaceful
and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully
any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need
to be
devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that,
given the "nature of man," given the degree of goodness or
badness at any

point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the
good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends
on the
values held by the individual members of society. The only
further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living
example
and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the
state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values
in the
minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in
favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and
economic.
Nor can we take up the various goods and services now
provided by the state and show how private individuals and
groups will be
able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market.
Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the
area where
it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and
act, even if it is only a "necessary evil" instead of a positive
good: the
vital realm of defense or protection of person and property
against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is
at least
vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial
resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the
creation of the
law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of
these admittedly necessary services of protection can be
satisfactorily and
efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the
free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper:

new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged
against the
implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to
perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the
anarchist
society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss
anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that
the state is
doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to
perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is
bound
to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such
a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and
unprecedented
record of the state through history: no combination of private
marauders can possibly begin to match the state's unremitting
record of
theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection
of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all
the
Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through
the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate
to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with
the
present system as the implicit given and then critically
examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to
begin at the
zero point and then critically examine both suggested
alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly
dropped down on
the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the
question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose
then that
someone suggested: "We are all bound to suffer from those of

us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then
solve this
problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones
family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle
disputes
to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and
of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to
protect
each of us from each other." I submit that this proposal would
get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family
themselves.
And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence
of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of
the
Jones family, the question of "who will guard the guardians?"
becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state
but an
overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in
attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society.
For it is
impossible for observers to predict voluntary social
arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on
the free market.
Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that
someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-
manufacturing
industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does
he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio
manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they
would be, where they would be located, what technology and
marketing
techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a
challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the
same is true of

those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of
protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the
dissolution of the
state into social and market arrangements, and these
arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than
political institutions.
The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and
perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern
technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly
feasible.
Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often
charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to
row out to
each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact
that this argument ignores the successful existence of private
lighthouses
in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another
vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes
charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship
would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam
which
could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had
paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular
disputes over alleged violations of person and property —
would be
resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all
disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of
the
crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many
cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties
alleging
that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a

defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist
or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that
will gain
a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for
courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew
instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or
violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has
to be
some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker
which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be
accepted by
the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between
the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a
third
mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be
accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much
less in a
society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful
cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two
parties, unable to
reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the
decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a
dispute has
arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract.
Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining
legitimacy.
Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and
coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run
government

courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to
voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious
settling of
disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that
Arbitration has grown to proportions that make the courts a
secondary recourse in many areas and completely superfluous in
others.
The ancient fear of the courts that arbitration would "oust" them
of their jurisdiction has been fulfilled with a vengeance the
common-
law judges probably never anticipated. Insurance companies
adjust over fifty thousand claims a year among themselves
through
arbitration, and the American Arbitration Association (AAA),
with headquarters in New York and twenty-five regional offices
across
the country, last year conducted over twenty-two thousand
arbitrations. Its twenty-three thousand associates available to
serve as
arbitrators may outnumber the total number of judicial
personnel … in the United States…. Add to this the unknown
number of
individuals who arbitrate disputes within particular industries or
in particular localities, without formal AAA affiliation, and the
quantitatively secondary role of official courts begins to be
apparent.
Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the
speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the
arbitrators can
proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law;
in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body
of

private law. "In other words," states Wooldridge, "the system of
extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a
body
of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the
same process that circumvents the forums established for the
settlement
of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement
between two people, a bilateral "law," has supplanted the
official law. The
writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a
rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge
concludes that "if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal
damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim
before him
(and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration
can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-
liberation from the law…."
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully
because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator.
Wooldridge points
out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the
American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent
voluntary arbitration
from being successful and expanding in the United States and in
England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of
merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which
successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant.
None of those
courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have
added the private courts of shippers which developed the body
of
admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, "anarchistic," and voluntary courts
ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of

social
ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the
offending merchant. This method of voluntary "enforcement,"
indeed proved
highly successful. Wooldridge writes that "the merchants' courts
were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could
not be
sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their]
decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise
people would
never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their
courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The
merchant
who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be
sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for
the
compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more
effective than physical coercion." Nor did this voluntary method
fail to
work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely
in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be
enforced in the courts,
that arbitration caught on and developed a following in the
American mercantile community. Its popularity, gained at a
time when
abiding by an agreement to arbitrate had to be as voluntary as
the agreement itself, casts doubt on whether legal coercion was
an
essential adjunct to the settlement of most disputes. Cases of
refusal to abide by an arbitrator's award were rare; one founder
of the
American Arbitration Association could not recall a single
example. Like their medieval forerunners, merchants in the
Americas did
not have to rely on any sanctions other than those they could

collectively impose on each other. One who refused to pay up
might find
access to his association's tribunal cut off in the future, or his
name released to the membership of his trade association; these
penalties were far more fearsome than the cost of the award
with which he disagreed. Voluntary and private adjudications
were
voluntarily and privately adhered to, if not out of honor, out of
the self-interest of businessmen who knew that the arbitral
mode of
dispute settlement would cease to be available to them very
quickly if they ignored an award.
It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes
even more feasible the collection and dissemination of
information about
people's credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their
contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist
society
would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data
and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract
and
arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In
the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen
in the
days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the
best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by
the various
parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the
arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to
gain an
increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will

no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of
endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute
will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both
expertise
and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will
rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:
the advocates of government see initiated force (the legal force
of government) as the only solution to social disputes.
According to
them, if everyone in society were not forced to use the same
court system … disputes would be insoluble. Apparently it
doesn't occur to
them that disputing parties are capable of freely choosing their
own arbiters…. they have not realized that disputants would, in
fact,
be far better off if they could choose among competing
arbitration agencies so that they could reap the benefits of
competition and
specialization. It should be obvious that a court system which
has a monopoly guaranteed by the force of statutory law will
not give as
good quality service as will free-market arbitration agencies
which must compete for their customers….
Perhaps the least tenable argument for government arbitration
of disputes is the one which holds that governmental judges are
more
impartial because they operate outside the market and so have
no vested interests…. Owing political allegiance to government
is
certainly no guarantee of impartiality! A governmental judge is
always impelled to be partial — in favor of the government,
from

whom he gets his pay and his power! On the other hand, an
arbiter who sells his services in a free market knows that he
must be as
scrupulously honest, fair, and impartial as possible or no pair of
disputants will buy his services to arbitrate their dispute. A
free-
market arbiter depends for his livelihood on his skill and
fairness at settling disputes. A governmental judge depends on
political pull.
If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in
advance for a series of arbitrators:
It would be more economical and in most cases quite sufficient
to have only one arbitration agency to hear the case. But if the
parties
felt that a further appeal might be necessary and were willing to
risk the extra expense, they could provide for a succession of
two or
even more arbitration agencies. The names of these agencies
would be written into the contract in order from the "first court
of
appeal" to the "last court of appeal." It would be neither
necessary nor desirable to have one single, final court of appeal
for every
person in the society, as we have today in the United States
Supreme Court.
Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the
free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where
there has
been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract
defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how
can courts
develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the
power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract

breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police
who use force in defending person and property against attack,
and
judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted
procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as
well as to
enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of
contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on
the
relationship between the private courts and the police; they may
be "vertically integrated," for example, or their services may be
supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that
police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will
provide
crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance
companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of
contracts or
arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to
recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection
between
insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay
out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the
rate of
crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the
losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may
subsist on
monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either
individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for
example,
that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been
assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor
has not

been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of
the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a
client,
and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the
hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may
legally
compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything,
since that would be aggression against an innocent man's person
or
property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than
subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to
appear or
send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The
trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones
innocent. In
my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the
anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must
end the matter
unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias
on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might
accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court,
because he
knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court
A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these
instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the
anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the
decision;
he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there.
Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to
me
that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert
that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in

courts which
each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds
Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the
two
parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts
will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the
two courts
agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the
concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration
contracts, it seems
very likely that the various private courts in the society will
have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular
appeals
court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the
case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they
will be
chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency,
honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are
inefficient or
biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a
dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally
established or
institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as
states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a
multitude
of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by
the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private
arbitrators on the
market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the
courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is
considered guilty
— unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court
proceedings.

No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case
there would be no point to having judges or courts at all.
Therefore,
every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have
some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My
suggestion
is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive.
"Two" is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that
there are two
parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or
contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against
guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form
and
thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper
I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out
the use
of defensive force — force in defense of person and property —
by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not
bringing
back the state to allow persons to use force to defend
themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police
agencies to defend
them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there
will be no "district attorney" to press charges on behalf of
"society."
Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then,
these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are
opposed
even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges
in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have
aggressed
against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the

victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the
right to
press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a
Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy's heir does not belong
to a private
insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate
himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the
noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No
one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since
the
right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-
defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in
contradiction to
the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes
to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This
is fine,
except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being
brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be
emphasized
that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against
aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against
McCoy if
in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if
the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and
killed the
wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of
murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to
obviate such
problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social
acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of
retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal
in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process,

indeed,
is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the
criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial
process is not a
good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack
Ruby's murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television,
there is no
need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the
murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn
venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns
criminal and
extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur,
given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a
moral
cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to
place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast
to a
society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like
arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their
reputation
for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market
important checks and balances exist against venal courts or
criminal
police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and
police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the
"Prudential
Police Agency" should turn outlaw and extract revenue from
victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning
to the
"Mutual" or "Equitable" Police Agency for defense and for
pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine

"checks and
balances" of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony
check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged
"balancing"
agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed,
given the monopoly "protection service" of a state, what is there
to
prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to
extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of
the
state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of
revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In
fact, the state
provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression,
since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the
coerced
monopoly of "protection." It is the state, indeed, that functions
as a mighty "protection racket" on a giant and massive scale. It
is the
state that says: "Pay us for your 'protection' or else." In the light
of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of
a
"protection racket" emerging from one or more private police
agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the
power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of
the
public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the
depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent
services. Taxation
is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor
conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn
outlaw, should
"Prudential" become a protection racket, it would then lack the
social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself

over
the centuries. "Prudential" would be seen by all as bandits,
rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed "sovereigns"
bent on
promoting the "common good" or the "general welfare." And
lacking such legitimacy, "Prudential" would have to face the
wrath of
the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private
defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market.
Given these
inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a
free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed,
historically,
it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a
stateless society; usually, it has come about through external
conquest rather
than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on
whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic,
common
law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a
system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the
courts
would differ completely from one to another. But in my view all
would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular,
prohibition
of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our
definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal
sanction
for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of
people in society holds that all redheads are demons who
deserve to be
shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots
Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges
in a court,

but that Jones's court, in philosophic agreement with Jones,
finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be
considered
legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian
law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For
otherwise,
courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such
aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would
violate the
definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a
strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the
society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case,
anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in
their
agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and
parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression
against
person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court
decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market
or the
wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will
be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so
on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is
no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just
property titles
or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders
— though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal
systems as
well. The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to
arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of

the
common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law
in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making
the law
but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived
either from custom or reason. The idea that the state is needed
to make
law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply
postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an
anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and
self-subsistent:
that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How
to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem,
but
certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless
people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short,
that the
state is not a necessary evil.
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Noam Chomsky: The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in,
and What's Wrong with Libertarians
Modern Success [1] / By Michael S. Wilson [2], Noam Chomsky
[3]
Noam Chomsky: The Kind of Anarchism I
Believe in, and What's Wrong with
Libertarians

May 28, 2013 |
The following is the adapted text of an interview that first
appeared in Modern
Success [4] magazine.So many things have been written about,
and discussed by,
Professor Chomsky, it was a challenge to think of anything new
to ask him: like the
grandparent you can’t think of what to get for Christmas
because they already have
everything.
So I chose to be a bit selfish and ask him what I’ve always
wanted to ask him. As an
out-spoken, actual, live-and-breathing anarchist, I wanted to
know how he could align
himself with such a controversial and marginal position.
Michael S. Wilson:You are, among many other things, a self-
described anarchist — an
anarcho-syndicalist, specifically. Most people think of
anarchists as disenfranchised
punks throwing rocks at store windows, or masked men tossing
ball-shaped bombs at fat
industrialists. Is this an accurate view? What is anarchy to
you?
Noam Chomsky:Well, anarchism is, in my view, basically a
kind of tendency in human
thought which shows up in different forms in different
circumstances, and has some
leading characteristics. Primarily it is a tendency that is
suspicious and skeptical of
domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of
hierarchy and domination in
human life over the whole range, extending from, say,

patriarchal families to, say, imperial
systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. It
assumes that the burden of
proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on
them. Their authority is not
self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a
justification. And if they can’t justify that
authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then
the authority ought to be
dismantled and replaced by something more free and just. And,
as I understand it,
Noam Chomsky: The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and
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1 of 6 11/5/14, 8:24 AM
anarchy is just that tendency. It takes different forms at
different times.
Anarcho-syndicalism is a particular variety of anarchism which
was concerned primarily,
though not solely, but primarily with control over work, over
the work place, over
production. It took for granted that working people ought to
control their own work, its
conditions, [that] they ought to control the enterprises in which
they work, along with
communities, so they should be associated with one another in
free associations, and …
democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a
more general free
society. And then, you know, ideas are worked out about how

exactly that should manifest
itself, but I think that is the core of anarcho-syndicalist
thinking. I mean it’s not at all the
general image that you described — people running around the
streets, you know,
breaking store windows — but [anarcho-syndicalism] is a
conception of a very organized
society, but organized from below by direct participation at
every level, with as little control
and domination as is feasible, maybe none.
Wilson: With the apparent ongoing demise of the capitalist
state, many people are looking
at other ways to be successful, to run their lives, and I’m
wondering what you would say
anarchy and syndicalism have to offer, things that others ideas
— say, for example,
state-run socialism — have failed to offer? Why should we
choose anarchy, as opposed
to, say, libertarianism?
Chomsky:Well what’s called libertarian in the United States,
which is a special U. S.
phenomenon, it doesn’t really exist anywhere else — a little bit
in England — permits a
very high level of authority and domination but in the hands of
private power: so private
power should be unleashed to do whatever it likes. The
assumption is that by some kind
of magic, concentrated private power will lead to a more free
and just society. Actually
that has been believed in the past. Adam Smith for example,
one of his main arguments
for markets was the claim that under conditions of perfect
liberty, markets would lead to
perfect equality. Well, we don’t have to talk about that! That

kind of —
Wilson: It seems to be a continuing contention today …
Chomsky: Yes, and so well that kind of libertarianism, in my
view, in the current world, is
just a call for some of the worst kinds of tyranny, namely
unaccountable private tyranny.
Anarchism is quite different from that. It calls for an
elimination to tyranny, all kinds of
tyranny. Including the kind of tyranny that’s internal to private
power concentrations. So
why should we prefer it? Well I think because freedom is better
than subordination. It’s
better to be free than to be a slave. It's better to be able to
make your own decisions than
to have someone else make decisions and force you to observe
them. I mean, I don’t
think you really need an argument for that. It seems like …
transparent.
The thing you need an argument for, and should give an
argument for, is, How can we
best proceed in that direction? And there are lots of ways
within the current society. One
way, incidentally, is through use of the state, to the extent that
it is democratically
controlled. I mean in the long run, anarchists would like to see
the state eliminated. But it
exists, alongside of private power, and the state is, at least to a
certain extent, under
public influence and control — could be much more so. And it
provides devices to
constrain the much more dangerous forces of private power.
Rules for safety and health
in the workplace for example. Or insuring that people have

decent health care, let’s say.
Many other things like that. They’re not going to come about
through private power. Quite
the contrary. But they can come about through the use of the
state system under limited
chomsky-kind...
2 of 6 11/5/14, 8:24 AM
democratic control … to carry forward reformist measures. I
think those are fine things to
do. they should be looking forward to something much more,
much beyond, — namely
actual, much larger-scale democratization. And that’s possible
to not only think about, but
to work on. So one of the leading anarchist thinkers, Bakunin
in the 19th cent, pointed out
that it’s quite possible to build the institutions of a future
society within the present one.
And he was thinking about far more autocratic societies than
ours. And that’s being done.
So for example, worker- and community- controlled enterprises
are germs of a future
society within the present one. And those not only can be
developed, but are being
developed. There’s some important work on this by Gar
Alperovitz who’s involved in the
enterprise systems around the Cleveland area which are worker
and community
controlled. There’s a lot of theoretical discussion of how it
might work out, from various

sources. Some of the most worked out ideas are in what’s
called the “parecon” —
participatory economics — literature and discussions. And
there are others. These are at
the planning and thinking level. And at the practical
implementation level, there are steps
that can be taken, while also pressing to overcome the worst …
the major harms …
caused by … concentration of private power through the use of
state system, as long as
the current system exists. So there’s no shortage of means to
pursue.
As for state socialism, depends what one means by the term. If
it’s tyranny of the
Bolshevik variety (and its descendants), we need not tarry on it.
If it’s a more expanded
social democratic state, then the comments above apply. If
something else, then what?
Will it place decision-making in the hands of working people
and communities, or in hands
of some authority? If the latter, then — once again — freedom
is better than subjugation,
and the latter carries a very heavy burden of justification.
Wilson:: Many people know you because of your and Edward
Herman’s development of
the Propaganda Model. Could you briefly describe that model
and why it might be
important to [college] students?
Chomsky: Well first look back a bit — a little historical
framework — back in the late 19th-,
early 20th century, a good deal of freedom had been won in
some societies. At the peak
of this were in fact the United States and Britain. By no means

free societies, but by
comparative standards quite advanced in this respect. In fact so
advanced, that power
systems — state and private — began to recognize that things
were getting to a point
where they can’t control the population by force as easily as
before, so they are going to
have to turn to other means of control. And the other means of
control are control of
beliefs and attitudes. And out of that grew the public relations
industry, which in those
days described itself honestly as an industry of propaganda.
The guru of the PR industry, Edward Bernays — incidentally,
not a reactionary, but a
Wilson-Roosevelt-Kennedy liberal — the maiden handbook of
the PR industry which he
wrote back in the 1920s was calledPropaganda. And in it he
described, correctly, the goal
of the industry. He said our goal is to insure that the
“intelligent minority” — and of course
anyone who writes about these things is part of that intelligent
minority by definition, by
stipulation, so we, the intelligent minority, are the only people
capable of running things,
and there’s that great population out there, the “unwashed
masses,” who, if they’re left
alone will just get into trouble: so we have to, as he put it,
“engineer their consent,” figure
out ways to insure they consent to our rule and domination.
And that’s the goal of the PR
industry. And it works in many ways. Its primary commitment
is commercial advertising.
In fact, Bernays made his name right at that time — late 20s —
by running an advertising
campaign to convince women to smoke cigarettes: women

weren’t smoking cigarettes,
chomsky-kind...
3 of 6 11/5/14, 8:24 AM
this big group of people who the tobacco industry isn’t able to
kill, so we’ve got to do
something about that. And he very successfully ran campaigns
that induced women to
smoke cigarettes: that would be, in modern terms, the cool
thing to do, you know, that’s
the way you get to be a modern, liberated woman. It was very
successful —
Wilson: Is there a correlation between that campaign and
what’s happening with the big
oil industry right now and climate change?
Chomsky: These are just a few examples. These are the origins
of what became a huge
industry of controlling attitudes and opinions. Now the oil
industry today, and in fact the
business world generally, are engaged in comparable campaigns
to try to undermine
efforts to deal with a problem that’s even greater than the mass
murder that was caused
by the tobacco industry; and it was mass murder. We are facing
a threat, a serious threat,
of catastrophic climate change. And it’s no joke. And [the oil
industry is] trying to impede
measures to deal with it for their own short-term profit

interests. And that includes not only
the petroleum industry, but the American Chamber of
Commerce — the leading business
lobby — and others, who’ve stated quite openly that they’re
conducting … they don’t call it
propaganda … but what would amount to propaganda campaigns
to convince people that
there’s no real danger and we shouldn’t really do much about it,
and that we should
concentrate on really important things like the deficit and
economic growth — what they
call ‘growth’ — and not worry about the fact that the human
species is marching over a cliff
which could be something like [human] species destruction; or
at least the destruction of
the possibility of a decent life for huge numbers of people. And
there are many other
correlations.
In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally
an effort to undermine
markets. We should recognize that. If you’ve taken an
economics course, you know that
markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers
making rational choices. You
take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself
… is that its purpose? No
it’s not. It’s to create uninformed consumers making irrational
choices. And these same
institutions run political campaigns. It’s pretty much the same:
you have to undermine
democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make
irrational choices. And so this is
only one aspect of the PR industry. What Herman and I were
discussing was another
aspect of the whole propaganda system that developed roughly

at that period, and that’s
“manufacture of consent,” as it was called, [consent] to the
decisions of our political
leaders, or the leaders of the private economy, to try to insure
that people have the right
beliefs and don’t try to comprehend the way decisions are being
made that may not only
harm them, but harm many others. That’s propaganda in the
normal sense. And so we
were talking about mass media, and the intellectual community
of the world in general,
which is to a large extent dedicated to this. Not that people see
themselves as
propagandists, but … that they are themselves deeply
indoctrinated into the principles of
the system, which prevent them from perceiving many things
that are really right on the
surface, [things] that would be subversive to power if
understood. We give plenty of
examples there and there’s plenty more you can mention up to
the present moment,
crucial ones in fact. That’s a large part of a general system of
indoctrination and control
that runs parallel to controlling attitudes and … consumeristic
commitments, and other
devices to control people.
You mentioned students before. Well one of the main problems
for students today — a
huge problem — is sky-rocketing tuitions. Why do we have
tuitions that are completely
out-of-line with other countries, even with our own history? In
the 1950s the United States

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4 of 6 11/5/14, 8:24 AM
was a much poorer country than it is today, and yet higher
education was … pretty much
free, or low fees or no fees for huge numbers of people. There
hasn’t been an economic
change that’s made it necessary, now, to have very high
tuitions, far more than when we
were a poor country. And to drive the point home even more
clearly, if we look just across
the borders, Mexico is a poor country yet has a good
educational system with free tuition.
There was an effort by the Mexican state to raise tuition, maybe
some 15 years ago or so,
and there was a national student strike which had a lot of
popular support, and the
government backed down. Now that’s just happened recently in
Quebec, on our other
border. Go across the ocean: Germany is a rich country. Free
tuition. Finland has the
highest-ranked education system in the world. Free … virtually
free. So I don’t think you
can give an argument that there are economic necessities behind
the incredibly high
increase in tuition. I think these are social and economic
decisions made by the people
who set policy. And [these hikes] are part of, in my view, part
of a backlash that developed
in the 1970s against the liberatory tendencies of the 1960s.
Students became much freer,
more open, they were pressing for opposition to the war, for
civil rights, women’s rights …

and the country just got too free. In fact, liberal intellectuals
condemned this, called it a
“crisis of democracy:” we’ve got to have more moderation of
democracy. They called,
literally, for more commitment to indoctrination of the young,
their phrase … we have to
make sure that the institutions responsible for the indoctrination
of the young do their
work, so we don’t have all this freedom and independence. And
many developments took
place after that. I don’t think we have enough direct
documentation to prove causal
relations, but you can see what happened. One of the things
that happened was
controlling students — in fact, controlling students for the rest
of their lives, by simply
trapping them in debt. That’s a very effective technique of
control and indoctrination. And
I suspect — I can’t prove — but I suspect that that’s a large part
of the reason behind [high
tuitions]. Many other parallel things happened. The whole
economy changed in
significant ways to concentrate power, to undermine workers’
rights and freedom. In fact
the economist who chaired the Federal Reserve around the
Clinton years, Alan
Greenspan — St. Alan as he was called then, the great genius of
the economics
profession who was running the economy, highly honored — he
testified proudly before
congress that the basis for the great economy that he was
running was what he called
“growing worker insecurity.” If workers are more insecure,
they won’t do things, like asking
for better wages and better benefits. And that’s healthy for the
economy from a certain

point of view, a point of view that says workers ought to be
oppressed and controlled, and
that wealth ought to be concentrated in a very few pockets. So
yeah, that’s a healthy
economy, and we need growing worker insecurity, and we need
growing student
insecurity, for similar reasons. I think all of these things line
up together as part of a
general reaction — a bipartisan reaction, incidentally — against
liberatory tendencies
which manifested themselves in the 60s and have continued
since.
Wilson: [Finally, ]I’m wondering if you could [end with some
advice for today's college
students].
Chomsky: There are plenty of problems in the world today, and
students face a number of
them, including the ones I mentioned — the joblessness,
insecurity and so on. Yet on the
other hand, there has been progress. In a lot of respects things
are a lot more free and
advanced than they were … not many years ago. So many
things that were really matters
of struggle, in fact even some barely even mentionable, say, in
the 1960s, are now …
partially resolved. Things like women’s rights. Gay rights.
Opposition to aggression.
Concern for the environment — which is nowhere near where it
ought to be, but far
beyond the 1960s. These victories for freedom didn’t come
from gifts from above. They

chomsky-kind...
5 of 6 11/5/14, 8:24 AM
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-
chomsky-kind-anarchism-i-believe-and-whats-wrong-
libertarians
Links:
[1] http://www.modernsuccess.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/michael-s-wilson
[3] http://www.alternet.org/authors/noam-chomsky
[4] http://modernsuccess.org
[5] mailto:[email protected]?Subject=Typo on Noam Chomsky:
The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and
What's Wrong with Libertarians
[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/chomsky
[7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
came from people struggling under conditions that are harsher
than they are now. There
is state repression now. But it doesn’t begin to compare with,
say, Cointelpro in the
1960s. People that don’t know about that ought to read and
think to find out. And that
leaves lots of opportunities. Students, you know, are relatively
privileged as compared
with the rest of the population. They are also in a period of
their lives where they are
relatively free. Well that provides for all sorts of opportunities.
In the past, such
opportunities have been taken by students who have often been
in the forefront of
progressive change, and they have many more opportunities

now. It’s never going to be
easy. There’s going to be repression. There’s going to be
backlash. But that’s the way
society moves forward.
[5]
See more stories tagged with:
chomsky [6]
chomsky-kind...
6 of 6 11/5/14, 8:24 AM
Chin Weng Fong
Point:
Government must exist in our society. The meaning of the
existence of government is to rules
and maintain order. The credibility of the government makes
people want to abide the law, and
the public authority allows the government to have the ability to
punish people who break the
rules and destruct order. Let the government take charge of
those tasks is appropriate and
reasonable, and no one can fit on this except government. For
me, since the government has

sufficient credibility, it has the right to exercise public
authority. It provides people with a variety of useful tools to
enable them to maximize building their lives, and it also gives
us the ability to do what we need and want to do. Compare to
the Libertarianism and anarchism, as Sandel
introduce libertarianism “If the libertarian theory of rights is
correct, then many activities of the
modern state are illegitimate, and violations of liberty……”
(Sandel) Anarchists believe that we
don’t need government except safeguard national security and
foreign trade agreement. This is
a big misunderstanding about the government because it plays a
very important part of our society. The smart American system
is that the government has been limited; it has been supervised
and balanced by the constitution. Unless it is necessary and
appropriate, no law will
be passed through. One of the purposes of government is to
protect individual rights and prevent them against violations by
physical force. Moreover, a proper government functions. It is
according to objective, verification program's philosophy, as
embodied in its entire legal
framework. From the constitution to its narrowest rules and
regulations, once such a government, or anything close to it, has
been established; there does not have a right to compete with
the government that is acting as judge and jury. To carry out the
protection functions of individual rights, the government
forcibly stops others from using any force that will threaten
people's right. Private power is the power that not authorized by
the government,

HB Armerding!6/5/2015 9:08 AM
Comment [1]: Chin, reading through your paper, I found some
of the grammar mistakes made what you were meaning to say
very unclear. So, it’s difficult for me as your teacher to know if
it’s merely that the grammar is incorrect, or if you’re not quite
sure what these arguments are about.
Please come see me, but it’s hard to issue this essay a grade.
You have some interesting pieces, but then there are several
places where I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say.
Grade: Not Passing
Comment [2]: This is a great way to write a topic sentence.
You’re focused more on the main idea of your argument and
this allows you to bring together several sources (and ideas) to
make your case.
Comment [3]: You have a clear opening here, but you seem to
be writing a lot of short choppy sentences. You can add a lot of
sophistication and complexity if you combine some of these
ideas - you could use transitional adverbs, correlative clauses,
subordinators, noun phrase appositives, and clause modifying
verbal phrases. Look these up on google and start incorporating
them into your writing. Not only will your writing read more
smoothly, it will also be much more sophisticated. Use the sheet
I handed out in class as well as chapter 8 of TSIS.

Comment [4]: Look up rules for gerrunds.
Comment [5]: Why does it have credibility?
Comment [6]: This is not necessary.
rather than its procedural safeguards verification, and not
subject to its supervision. The government put this personal
power as a threat, as a potential violation of individual rights.
In stopping such private force, the government is combating
that threat. In addition, a proper government will not use force
to stop a man from using right to defend himself in an
emergency. When the government could not help him, asked
him to objectively prove at the trial that he was acting in self-
defense emergency. Similarly, the government does not prohibit
private security. Under the supervision of the private security
companies, by authorizing them, do not give them any special
rights or immunities; they are subject to government authority
and the law. They cannot make their own laws. Anarchists
oppose the idea of a monopoly of force. This only shows that
they cannot understand the force. It is an attempt to monopolize
the use of force. The “market law” of anarchist idea can’t work
even in a soccer game since the rules of
the game will definitely win the game. Therefore, government
should exist in our society not
only for defending individual’s right, but also complete
something what anarchism couldn’t
finish.

Counterpoint:
Anarchism is living according to their own mind, not insulted
mercy. Murray Rothbard summarizes anarchism through his
article “society without a state”, who said “In my view, the
anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the
good and the cooperative, while
it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of
the evil and the
criminal….”(Rothbard) I can’t agree with him more. Anarchism
is not complicated and scary. The terrifying is anarchism always
provoke some debate. For example: If people only do what they
want to do, it does not cause chaos? But we were already living
in the chaos, weren’t it? Millions
of people lost their jobs or doing boring work day after day.
When some of the people hungry,
others are throwing the food into the sea. However, this kind of
chaotic scene happens every

Comment [7]: How do the “rules” win the game.
Comment [8]:
Comment [9]: Who? Look up rules for using clear pronouns.
I’m not sure who you are talking about here.
Comment [10]: Also, not sure what you mean here. Slow down.
Explain your ideas.
Comment [11]: This sentence is missing a clear subject.
Comment [12]: I would encourage you to not ask a question if
you don’t know how your reader will answer. Either give your
own answer or don’t write questions at all. Just make statements
and then support those statements.

Comment [13]: Not sure what you mean here.
Comment [14]: Subject verb agreement error.
Comment [15]: Missing verb.
day. Even those something which is considered to be benevolent
deeds, but it actually bad for us. The social insurance services
(Health Service) as an industrial maintenance field, like the
patch only on the surface. Social insurance services do not
allow us to create something which truly meets our needs, and
managed by our health care system. In essence, what authorities
do, it only forces people to do what they do not want to do.
Anarchists believe that the real source of confusion is the power
and government. No ruling class and its shackles imposed upon
us, the government will no longer exist. When the government
disappears, we will be able to freely follow our needs, to build
our society. We will get much more on a free community than a
majority of violence, systematically crush individual
community. Anarchists have often been challenged about how to
deal with murderers. If there are no police, who would come to
stop them. The vast majority of murders mostly on impulse, and
therefore whether the police or someone else, such crimes are
very hard to stop. However, we believe in a more rational way.
People are less likely to feel frustrated society, such a "crime"
would be less. Rothbard also said “On the free market, many
scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private
courts and the police; they may be "vertically
integrated……"(Rothbard) everyone could become “polices”,
they are just wearing the official uniform, so they are not

necessary exist in our society. Moreover, prison has been
proven that it is not a good method of promoting human
goodness. Local residents' care and attention of the victims and
assailant are a more appropriate solution. In addition, the
current criminal justice system will only cause more crime.
Those long-term offenders behind bars, often considered unable
to adapt to life outside prison since their decision ability have
been deprived by the prison. Let the sociopath people stay
together is not a good method to develop a responsible sense.
Therefore, most of the Criminal will commit the crime again. In
addition, rulers claim that they are protecting us. In fact, they
are more care about themselves and their assets. If we are one
of the members of the local
community, we owned and shared resources. Theft is least
likely to occur because the motivation lies in the hands of a few
resources already exist. Local communities must develop a
mechanism to deal with those individuals who harm others.
Another objection is often encountered anarchism, anarchism
may be possible in small-scale agricultural societies. Society
must be divided into small units; its size as small as possible so
that the general people understand its operation. For the social
composition and the basic principles of anarchism, the small
group is better able to run smoothly, and cooperation with other
similar groups. Further, the argument corresponding to this
interesting phenomenon is the "economies of scale” which is
facing a severe challenge. When factories, farms and
administrative systems, over a certain size, "The huge number is
powerful" become useless. In this case, the state becomes an
unnecessary system, and anarchism should become our new
society system.
Reflection:
This is kind of new experience of writing arguments essay. I
never wrote this kind of essay before, even I never thought this
is one of the way to write an essay. However, I believe I learned

and improved a lot through this kind of experience. Actually,
this is part of the five paragraphs essay’s body paragraph
(Thesis-example-detail), but it put two different ideas together
to become a stronger agreement paper. It is very interesting to
argue both sides by different ideas and examples. I found many
weakest argument points through viewing the opposite side. I
can compare the point and counterpoint thus improve my
support detail. Moreover, I have to make the balance and argue
so well to let the reader cannot tell which is actually my own
position. This is a very challenge part of the essay; not only
require me to choose the idea and example carefully, but also
make the comparison between two arguments. However, it is a
really fun writing experience, and it also improves my thinking
and reading skill. The most improvement of the thinking skill is
come from reading. I am no longer focusing the
meaning of the sentences. During my writing, I try to
understand what the author’s thought and
try to think about my personal view of his/her point thus
become one of my example of my
essay. Although it is not a very new way to provide examples to
support my idea, it is new for
me to conclude the idea after viewing many kind of reading and
video. Therefore, my thinking,
reading, and writing improve a lot because of this writing
experience, I believe I can use this kind
of skill on my future essay soon.

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