CHOMSKY, ANARCHISTS,  SOCIALISTS

This is from Alan Ritter's 1980 book, Anarchism: A Theoretical Analysis.

 

The error of those who claim that anarchists are socialists at heart stems from blindness toward their disagreement about the causal efficacy of the state qua state.  A typical version of this claim is advanced by Noam Chomsky.  Anarchism is not to be identified with socialism simpliciter, since many socialists rely on legal government.  But there are also socialists (Chomsky cites Anton Pannekoek and William Paul) who are who are at one with finding the state antipathetic.  It is part of this 'libertarian wing of socialism' that Chomsky thinks anarchism should be classed.

 

If the antipathy to legal government of council communists, syndicalists and similar representatives of socialism's libertarian wing came from alarm about the effects of the state's inherent attributes, Chomsky's claim that anarchism is  a type of socialism would be correct.  But even the most libertarian of socialists is alarmed by the effects of the state's changeable characteristics, such as its organization or policies. . . . And what they project as a successor to the existing state is not a society  freed of legal government, but a society organized, in Chomsky's words, 'on truly democratic lines, with democratic control in the workplace and in the community'.

 

. . . Libertarian socialists . . .  are not anarchists but democrats.  [Libertarian socialists] . . . . cannot possibly be called anarchists.