Noam Chomsky (9 page)
Authors: Wolfgang B. Sperlich
As alluded to earlier, one key strand of Chomskyan linguistics to date is bio-linguistics. The program that implements this in detail is the so-called
Minimalist Program (
MP
)
, named after the 1995 publication of the same title. While there had been earlier mentions of the term ‘minimalist’, one can begin by asking what the term is supposed to convey in relation to a linguistic program. Taking it in its literal sense one might assume that the whole theory has become ‘minimal’ in its range of application. Not so, its range is becoming wider but what is being minimized is the system of rules in favour of a few but powerful explanatory principles. What comes to the fore now is the implementation of the long considered ‘principles and parameters’ approach. While some of these ‘principles’ had been developed in
Government and Binding (
GB
)
theory, there was too much of an emphasis on stipulating rule systems that define such principles. A radical new approach demanded that such principles should be stripped down to the bare bones. Take, for example, all this labelling of a tree structure (or string notation) – is it really necessary? No, it isn’t, and here comes ‘bare phrase structure’, where all we have are the syntactic objects but no more labelled constituents. If we apply the principle ‘Move a’, then all we do is to ‘Move a’ up or down unlabelled nodes. The following tree is an example of a bare tree structure of the Japanese sentence
John-wa nani-o kaimasita ka?
(What did John buy?)
as proposed by the Minimalist Program linguist David Adger,
37
but with the constituent labelling deleted:
As can be seen, without delving into the technicalities, the verb
kaimasita
(to buy) gets shifted around quite a bit (indicated by round brackets), as does
John-wa
. There are two abstract (i.e. non-lexical) syntactic objects, namely
T
and v. Items within square brackets are features that need to be ‘checked’ – the strikethrough items indicate that this has been done successfully. An
MP
linguist can figure out what all the constituents are (i.e. the points where a branch meets), and in any case, since they are determined by the merged syntactic objects, there is no need to make them explicit and thus complicate the picture by inserting further categories. While for the uninitiated the tree structure derivation above is double Dutch, the figure still demonstrates the capacity of the
Minimalist Program
. It is the capacity to generate any well-formed sentence in any language, as well as being able to explain where and why an ill-formed (i.e. ungrammatical) sentence crashed in its derivation. Naturally all or most of the parameters of a given language must be known before such a derivation is contemplated, and in addition the principles applied may have to be modified to suit individual languages. The underlying skeleton, however, is provided by the
Minimalist Program
and the Universal Grammar (
UG
). The ensuing explanatory power is thus much advanced. No other current linguistic theory can make such sweeping claims. As Chomsky is always careful to say, ‘if true’, the
Minimalist Program
in combination with bio-linguistics and Universal Grammar shows the greatest promise in current linguistics research.
The net result of Chomsky’s philosophy of language has been to wrest language away from philosophy and situate it within a natural science called linguistics. As for Chomsky the philosopher, what he has achieved in philosophical terms is to counter the claims made by Quine and other behaviourists, namely that language is learned behaviour. Chomsky’s own counter-claim, based on his scientific investigations, is that the human language capacity is innate as part of a biological system. This nativist or innate theory of language has been the touchstone of both philosophers and linguists who subscribe to radically different ideas about language and mind, such as the
tabula rasa
notion that the mind is a blank slate at birth, to be filled only by experience. Chomsky’s more particular theory that language competency is based on Universal Grammar (
UG
) has been questioned more by fellow linguists than by philosophers, but the issue is the same. Various schools of thought, such as functional and pragmatic linguistics, take much more store in communication as the driving force of language. Cognitive linguistics, although closer to Chomskyan linguistics, claims that language competency derives more directly from general cognitive functions, thus not stipulating a separate interface such as Chomsky’s
UG
.
In particular, Chomsky’s philosophy of language has made a great contribution to the age-old question as to how children acquire language and how they are able to use it creatively. No other theory has such an explanatory power. Chomsky has solved Plato’s Problem for language, namely how come we know so much, based on so little input.
Hence, during the 1990s and up to 2005 Chomsky has merely reiterated his philosophical positions and has not contributed as such to the paradigm other than in his incarnation as a scientist
cum
linguist. In this respect he is very much like Russell, who, while popularly known as a philosopher, actually contributed very little to speculative philosophy. Russell’s main contribution was in mathematics and, while mathematics has never been a sub-field of philosophy, Russell succeeded in demonstrating – Wittgenstein notwithstanding – that mathematical logic is embedded in natural language. Russell’s popular philosophy – like that of Chomsky – is very much bound up in his political activism.
Political Activist
Anyone writing an essay on the rise of fascism and the fall of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War must have a certain political bent. If you are aged ten at the time of writing such an essay you must be destined for a career of political dissident. Chomsky remembers
what it was about because I remember what struck me. This was right after the fall of Barcelona, the Fascist forces had conquered Barcelona, and that was essentially the end of the Spanish Civil War. And the article was about the spread of fascism around Europe. So it started off by talking about Munich and Barcelona, and the spread of the Nazi power, fascist power, which was extremely frightening.
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A few years later his political education took on an added dimension:
by the time I was old enough to get on a train by myself, I would go to New York for a weekend and stay with my aunt and uncle, and hang around at anarchist bookstores down around Union Square and Fourth Avenue. There were little bookstores with émigrés, really interesting people. To my mind they looked about ninety; they were maybe in their forties or something, who were very interested in young people. They wanted young people to come along, so they spent a lot of attention. Talking to these people was a real education.
2
The uncle in question ran a news-stand that was a meeting place for intellectuals and professionals involved in psychoanalysis. Their political theories as to the state of the world were far more varied than the spectrum between traditional Left and Right. New York, as the great melting pot and first port of call for those escaping a bleak Europe and Asia, is a hotbed of political intrigue. While mainstream American politics is preoccupied with the difficult question of whether or not to engage in the coming military conflagration, there are, on the Left in particular, widely differing opinions as to what should or shouldn’t be done. Young Chomsky’s lessons in politics in New York were from a wide variety of sources, including those of the Jewish anarcho-syndicalists. They had looked to Barcelona as the promised land where a truly participatory democracy was on the verge of being realized. Chomsky’s visits to the offices of the
Freie Arbeiter Stimme
, the Jewish anarcho-syndicalist news magazine in New York, yielded additional material. Although Chomsky did not know it then, Rudolf Rocker (1873–1958), an anarchist legend in his own time, was living in upstate New York and contributing articles to the
Freie Arbeiter Stimme
. Years later, an already politically informed Chomsky came across the writings of Rocker and cited him as an important source that informs his own political outlook.
While Rocker is just one of many influences on Chomsky, it is instructive to use him as an example. For a start, while Rocker was well known among Jewish anarchists, almost no one outside this circle knew about him – nor is he known any better today. Had Chomsky turned out a Marxist, Trotskyite, Maoist or a follower of Rosa Luxemburg, the traditional Left might have understood better his political activism. But Rudolf Rocker and anarcho-syndicalism? Rocker, in fact, is just one of the thousands of little-known activists who wrote large tracts on political theory and praxis, being revered by a small band of followers. Reading Rocker one gets the feeling of a boundless optimism as to where anarchism might take us, were it not for those ever-present obstacles in the way. He enthuses about the anarchists of Spain and Barcelona:
the Anarcho-Syndicalist workers of Spain not only knew how to fight, but that they were also filled with the constructive ideas which are so necessary in the time of a real crisis. It is to the great merit of Libertarian Socialism in Spain that since the time of the First International it has trained the workers in that spirit which treasures freedom above all else and regards the intellectual independence of its adherents as the basis of its existence. It was the passive and lifeless attitude of the organised workers in other countries, who put up with the policy of non-intervention of their governments, that led to the defeat of the Spanish workers and peasants after a heroic struggle of more than two and one half years.
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One feature present in the writings of Rocker, as of the radical Left in general, is however the ever-present tendency to declare as Enemy Number One the other groups of the Left, instead of coming up with a united front against the real enemy, the Centre and the Right: Theodore Roosevelt had after all declared that ‘anarchism is a crime against the whole human race’.
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Instead Rocker rails against Marx and Engels, and against the perceived totalitarianism of the Russian soviet system saying that
the idea of ‘soviets’ is a well defined expression of what we take to be social revolution, being an element belonging entirely to the constructive side of socialism. The origin of the notion of dictatorship is wholly bourgeois and, as such, has nothing to do with socialism. It is possible to harness the two terms together artificially, if it is so desired, but all one would get would be a very poor caricature of the original idea of soviets, amounting, as such, to a subversion of the basic notion of socialism.
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The end effect of such infighting seems to be that anyone outside the narrow spectrum of the anarchist position can be labelled a totalitarian. When, of course, the anarchists attack the centre in equal measures, the balance seems restored. When Chomsky does so, there is often utter disbelief and consternation from the centre and the left-of-centre liberals. How can he say that ‘the
US
is a leading terrorist state’?
6
In an upside-down world we may well ask how Chomsky deals with some of the other assumed bogeys of anarchism that instil so much fear in the heart of the bourgeoisie, for example the call for violent revolution or even the use of terror. Given that governments, corporations, churches, capital and property rule by violence and terror, the anarchist has the right to self-defence and if necessary use the very methods of the enemy, hence engage in counter-terror. These topics are hotly debated by anarchists themselves and indeed the ‘anarchist terrorists’ were often seen as marginal figures, ‘isolated on the fringe of anarchist movements’.
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Rocker – and Chomsky for that matter – do not subscribe to such violence, hoping instead that the enemies of the people will hang themselves with the ropes of oppression. Fat chance, as some might say. Nor does Rocker – and Chomsky for that matter – subscribe to the idea that the churches are part of the problem. This is of course again in sharp contrast to the Marxist position that declares religion as the opium of the people. While neither Rocker (as a Gentile) nor Chomsky is religious, they are willing to consider the more benign forms of religiosity as fitting with anarchist ideals. Chomsky is in favour of Liberation Theology in South America, as Rocker is in favour of a Jewish spirituality that has inspired Jewish artisans all over the world. Rocker was in favour of the Allies in the Second World War, a position that many an anarchist and leftist would have called revisionist.
It can be deduced from these examples that Rocker’s brand of Jewish anarcho-syndicalism is just one position in the wide spectrum of anarchism, a splinter group within a splinter group. One may interpret this as the anarchist ideal in that every individual holds to his or her freedom, each representing a unique political perspective – if not a political party, so to speak.