Chapter Six

Community Activists

1. On the scale of the working-class media early in the twentieth century, see for example, Jon Bekken, "The Working-Class Press at the Turn of the Century," in William S. Solomon and Robert W. McChesney, eds., Ruthless Criticism: New Perspectives in U.S. Communication History, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993, pp. 151-175. An excerpt (pp. 158, 151, 159, 160, 162, 157):

Total circulation [of the U.S. socialist press] exceeded two million copies before World War I, with the Appeal to Reason -- far and away the circulation leader -- boasting a weekly circulation of 761,747. . . .

At the turn of the century, the U.S. labor movement published hundreds of newspapers in dozens of languages, ranging from local and regional dailies issued by working-class political organizations and mutual aid societies to national union weeklies and monthlies. These newspapers practiced a journalism very different from that of the capitalist newspapers. . . . Their newspapers were an integral part of working-class communities, not only reporting the news of the day or week, but offering a venue where readers could debate political, economic and cultural issues. Readers could follow the activities of working-class institutions in every field and could be mobilized to support efforts to transform economic and political conditions. . . . Labor newspapers ranged from small, irregularly issued sheets to twelve- to sixteen-page dailies that were as large, and in many ways as professional, as many of the capitalist newspapers with which they co-existed. . . . [W]orkers did not passively accept their lot. Rather, they built a rich array of ethnic, community, workplace and political organizations that helped them to survive from day to day . . . vibrant working-class cultures organized along ethnic as well as class lines. . . .

To counter what they saw as a strong antilabor bias in the mainstream press, and to secure access to unreported labor news, editors organized a cooperative news-gathering service in November 1919. With the support of labor, socialist, farm-labor, and other papers, Federated Press bureaus in Washington, Chicago, and New York dispatched daily releases, beginning in 1920. Federated Press began with 110 member papers, including 22 dailies. . . . By 1925, two years after the A.F.L. [American Federation of Labor, the most conservative segment of the U.S. labor movement] denounced Federated Press as a vehicle for communist propaganda, the Federated Press circulated its daily 5,000-word service to 150 papers and a supplemental weekly labor letter to 1,000 subscribers. In addition to breaking labor news, Federated Press provided in-depth articles on industrial and financial trends, wage levels, and corporate profits. The service survived until 1956, when it had 53 member papers and was one of four news services available to working-class newspapers (the other three were tied to the A.F.L. or C.I.O. [Congress of Industrial Organizations]). But union subscribers canceled the service after the A.F.L.-C.I.O. merger and the resulting purge of left-wing unions, and Federated was forced from the field.

J.B.S. Hardman and Maurice F. Neufeld, eds., The House of Labor: Internal Operations of American Unions, New York: Prentice-Hall, 1951. An excerpt (p. 188):

In 1949, Herbert Little, director of the Office of Information, U.S. Labor Department, reported that that department had a mailing list of more than 800 labor periodicals. . . . According to Mr. Little, "Their circulations have been estimated to total more than 20,000,000, possibly as high as 30,000,000. Eliminating obvious duplications, such as the machinist who gets his union's weekly newspaper, its monthly journal and the local labor papers, it is apparent that nearly all of the 16,000,000 labor unionists in this country get and probably read one or more labor papers. If their families are taken into consideration, the possible readership would be tripled.

See also chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnote 36.

2. Alternative Radio offers an extensive catalog of taped lectures and interviews by many speakers including Noam Chomsky, and is a resource about community radio generally (Box 551, Boulder, CO, 80306, 1-800-444-1977). Radio Free Maine also offers a catalog of taped lectures by Chomsky and others (P.O. Box 2705, Augusta, ME, 04338 (207) 622-6629). The Z Media Institute is involved in developing alternative media of various kinds (18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA, 02543, (508) 548-9063). The Pacifica Network of major community-controlled radio stations includes KFCF (Fresno, CA), KPFA (Berkeley, CA), KPFK (North Hollywood, CA), KPFT (Houston, TX), WBAI (New York, NY), and WPSW (Washington, DC). In addition, many other communities of all sizes have non-corporate and popularly-controlled radio.

Z Magazine -- which is discussed in the text of this chapter of U.P. and in chapter 9 of U.P. -- depends for its survival upon subscriptions (18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA, 02543, (508) 548-9063, www.zmag.org/znet.htm). Dollars and Sense is an excellent bimonthly magazine providing "left" perspectives on current economic affairs and exploring the workings of the U.S. and international economies (1 Summer Street, Somerville, MA, 02143, (617) 628-8411, www.dollarsandsense.org). Extra! is Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting's useful bimonthly magazine of media criticism (F.A.I.R., 130 West 25th St., New York, NY, 10001, 1-800-847-3993, www.fair.org). The Nation is a liberal weekly which often has interesting material (P.O. Box 37072, Boone, IA, 50037, 1-800-333-8536, www.thenation.com).

For some other popularly-oriented political organizations and publications, see the resource guides at the end of: Noam Chomsky, The Common Good, Tucson, AZ: Odonian, 1998; Noam Chomsky, Secrets, Lies and Democracy, Tucson, AZ: Odonian, 1994; and Mark Achbar, ed., Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Montreal: Black Rose, 1994; and see Project Censored, The Progressive Guide to Alternative Media and Activism, New York: Seven Stories, 1999. See also footnote 6 of chapter 9 of U.P.

For extensive lists of links to the websites of progressive organizations and information sources, see for example, www.zmag.org/znet.htm (includes a "progressive internet resources directory"); www.fair.org/resources.html (includes alternative news sources, media criticism and reviews); www.commondreams.org/community.htm (lists scores of progressive and activist groups).

3. On 75 percent of the U.S. public supporting a nuclear freeze, see for example, Daniel Yankelovich and John Doble, "The Public Mood: Nuclear Weapons and the U.S.S.R.," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 63, Fall 1984, pp. 33-46 (reporting public opinion poll findings).

4. On Gorbachev's declaration of a unilateral nuclear test freeze, see for example, Serge Schmemann, "Gorbachev Seeks To Talk To Reagan On Atom Test Ban," New York Times, March 30, 1986, p. 1 ("Moscow announced a halt of its testing program last July, asking Washington to join in").

5. The response of some of the most prominent disarmament activists is illustrated by a three-page funding letter sent out by the Institute for Defense & Disarmament Studies in March 1985, signed by its director, Randall Forsberg, who deserves much of the credit for the successes of the nuclear freeze campaign. Chomsky discusses and quotes from this letter as follows (Turning the Tide: U.S. Interventionism in Central America and the Struggle for Peace, Boston: South End, 1985, p. 188):

The Institute, which "launched the nuclear freeze movement in 1980," accomplished what it set out to do: it educated the public to support a nuclear freeze. But this popular success did not lead to "a real electoral choice on the issue in 1984." Why? Because of "expert opposition to the freeze," which prevented Mondale [the Democratic candidate] from taking a supportive position. The conclusion, then, is that we must devote our efforts to "building expert support": convincing the experts. This achieved, we will be able to move to a nuclear freeze.

6. Rosa Parks attended the Highlander Folk School's 1955 School Desegregation Workshop, and in December of that year began the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Tennessee officials shut down the Highlander School in 1962, after it had been attacked by white segregationists and others as a "Communist training school." A new institution, the Highlander Research and Education Center, was founded in its wake. Highlander had been a meeting place for various Socialist and Communist associations, and its founders "envisioned the rise of a radical coalition in support of an aggressive, interracial movement of industrial workers and farmers in the South," although "neither [its founder Myles] Horton nor any other faculty member ever took the final step and joined the Communist party." See John M. Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996, pp. 162-164, 54-55; Frank Adams, Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander, Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 1975.

For a remarkable and inspiring book about Highlander and its founder, see Myles Horton, The Long Haul: An Autobiography, New York: Teachers College Press, 1998.

7. On the Joint Chiefs of Staff's fear of "civil disorder" in 1968, see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 77.

8. On the "Wise Men"'s mission, see for example, George C. Herring, America's Longest War: 1950-1975, New York: Knopf, 1986, pp. 202-208. The author reviews President Johnson's briefing with the "Wise Men" on March 26, 1968, and the "tremendous erosion of support" for the war among the nation's business and legal elite. The "Wise Men" were Dean Acheson, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Douglas Dillon, Cyrus Vance, Arthur Dean, John McCloy, Omar Bradley, Matthew Ridgway, Maxwell Taylor, Robert Murphy, Henry Cabot Lodge, Abe Fortas, and Arthur Goldberg; Presidential adviser Clark Clifford also was highly influential during the period. There is additional discussion of the economic crisis of mid-March 1968 in the 1996 expanded edition of Herring's book at pp. 220-227. See also footnote 77 of chapter 1 of U.P.

9. On Thomas Jefferson's view of corporations, as well as his view of the effect of economic inequality on democracy, see for example, John F. Manley, "American Liberalism and the Democratic Dream: Transcending the American Dream," Policy Studies Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, Fall 1990, pp. 89f. An excerpt (pp. 97-99):

Jefferson did not support capitalism; he supported independent production. . . . The fundamental Jeffersonian proposition is that "widespread poverty and concentrated wealth cannot exist side by side in a democracy." This proposition is dismissed by liberals making peace with the rich and coming to terms with inequality, but Jefferson perceived the basic contradictions between democracy and capitalism. . . . In 1817 he complained that the banks' mania "is raising up a monied aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance. . . ." A year earlier he said he hoped the United States would reject the British example and "crush in it's [sic] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. . . ."

Jefferson understood that Democracy was problematic. But the alternatives were rule by the rich, or a despot. "I am not among those who fear the people," he writes. "They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. . . . [S]how me where the people have done half the mischief in these forty years, that a single despot would have done in a single year. . . ." Jefferson reminds us that democracy is impossible without a large measure of social and economic equality.

Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. An excerpt (pp. 269-270, 106):

Jefferson's deathbed faith overcame deep misgivings. . . . Men divide naturally into two parties, "aristocrats and democrats," he wrote. On one side stood "those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes"; on the other stood "those who identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the honest & safe, altho' not the most wise depository of the public interests. . . ." He was alarmed by a Republican Congress "at a loss for objects whereon to throw away the supposed fathomless funds of the treasury." Soon he would conclude that these younger National Republicans have "nothing in them of the feelings or principles of '76." They wanted a "single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed incorporations," he complained, through which the few would soon be "riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry."

10. On Adam Smith's view of corporations, see for example, Patricia Werhane, Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. An excerpt (p. 125):

Smith [had a] genuine fear of institutions, as shown in his critique of the system of mercantilism, of monopolies, and of political or economic institutions that favor some individuals over others. Smith questions the existence of "joint-stock companies" (corporations), except in exceptional circumstances, because the institutionalization of management power separated from ownership creates institutional management power cut loose from responsibility. Smith's fear is that such institutions might become personified, so that one would regard them as real entities and hence treat them as incapable of being dismantled.

See also, Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976 (original 1776). An excerpt (Book V, ch. I, pt. iii, art. i, pp. 280-282):

To establish a joint stock company, however, for any undertaking, merely because such a company might be capable of managing it successfully; or to exempt a particular set of dealers from some of the general laws which take place with regard to all their neighbours, merely because they might be capable of thriving if they had such an exemption, would certainly not be reasonable. To render such an establishment perfectly reasonable . . . it ought to appear with the clearest evidence, that the undertaking is of greater and more general utility than the greater part of common trades. . . . The joint stock companies, which are established for the public-spirited purpose of promoting some particular manufacture, over and above managing their own affairs ill, to the diminution of the general stock of the society, can in other respects scarce ever fail to do more harm than good. Notwithstanding the most upright intentions, the unavoidable partiality of their directors to particular branches of the manufacture, of which the undertakers mislead and impose upon them, is a real discouragement to the rest, and necessarily breaks, more or less, that natural proportion which would otherwise establish itself between judicious industry and profit, and which, to the general industry of the country, is of all encouragements the greatest and the most effectual.

And see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 1; and footnote 91 of chapter 10 of U.P.

11. On the development of corporate rights by lawyers and judges, without public participation, during the nineteenth century, see chapter 9 of U.P. and its footnote 35.

12. On industrial democracy having been a goal of the U.S. labor movement, see chapter 9 of U.P. and its footnote 33 (also see its footnote 15).

13. "Resist, Inc." can be contacted at: 259 Elm St., Suite 201, Somerville, MA, 02144, (617) 623-5110 (www.resistinc.org). "Funding Exchange" is a national network office for progressive funding organizations in the United States: 666 Broadway #500, New York, NY, 10012, (212) 529-5300 (www.fex.org). For lists of activist groups, see the political action resource guides cited in footnote 2 of this chapter.

14. On the violence of American labor history, see for example, Patricia Cayo Sexton, The War on Labor and the Left: Understanding America's Unique Conservatism, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991, chs. 4, 6, and 7. An excerpt (pp. 55, 58, 65):

Labor everywhere has "war stories" to tell, but nowhere has the record been as violent as in the United States. . . . One review of some major U.S. strikes puts the figure at 700 dead and untold thousands seriously injured in labor disputes, but these figures, though impressive, include only strike casualties reported in newspapers between 1877 and 1968; and may therefore grossly underestimate the total casualties. (During the 1877-1968 period, state and federal troops intervened in labor disputes more than 160 times, almost invariably on behalf of employers.) In the seven years from 1890 to 1897, an estimated 92 people were killed in some major strikes, and from January 1, 1902, to September 1904, an estimated 198 people were killed and 1,966 injured. These casualties were overwhelmingly strikers killed or injured in some major strikes and lockouts. . . . After the adoption of some protective legislation, between 1947 and 1962, violence and militia intervention declined, but an estimated 29 people were killed in major strikes during the period, 20 of them in the South. By contrast, only 1 person in Britain has been killed in a strike since 1911. . . .

Over the years, labor espionage has been a large and profitable business. In April 1946, for example, some 230 agencies were in the business, the largest of them being William J. Burns's International Detective Agency, Inc. (operating in forty-three cities) and [Allan] Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, Inc. (operating in thirty-four cities). In just three top agencies, an estimated 135,000 men were employed at one point, operating in over 100 offices and more than 10,000 local branches, and earning some $65 million annually for the agencies. . . . [D]uring the 1930s the agencies charged employers an estimated $80 million a year. General Motors testified before the LaFollette [Congressional] committee that it paid about a million dollars to such agencies from January 1934 through July 1936. . . . The use of espionage agencies and professional strikebreakers has been almost unknown in European and other developed democracies.

John Streuben, Strike Strategy, New York: Gaer, 1950, pp. 300-309 (listing 143 deaths in the United States which were officially attributed to labor-management disputes between 1933 and 1949); David Montgomery, "Afterword," in David Demarest, ed., "The River Ran Red": Homestead 1892, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992, pp. 225-228; Jeremy Brecher, Strike!, Cambridge, MA: South End, 1997 (revised and updated edition; original 1972)(a valuable U.S. labor history). See also footnote 32 of this chapter; and footnote 81 of chapter 10 of U.P.

15. On the British press's reaction to the violence of U.S. labor relations in the late nineteenth century, see for example, Patricia Cayo Sexton, The War on Labor and the Left: Understanding America's Unique Conservatism, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991, pp. 83, 100.

16. On the role of state subsidies in the U.S. economy, see chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 and 10; chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnotes 38 to 44, 51 and 53; and chapter 10 of U.P. and its footnotes 22 and 23. See also chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnotes 4 and 5.

17. On discussion of popular democracy in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century revolutions, see for example, Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution, New York: Viking, 1972. Radical democrats in the seventeenth-century English Revolution argued (p. 48):

[I]t will never be a good world while knights and gentlemen make us laws, that are chosen for fear and do but oppress us, and do not know the people's sores. It will never be well with us till we have Parliaments of countrymen like ourselves, that know our wants.

The same sentiment was voiced in the American colonies in the eighteenth century (Gordon Wood, The Radicalism Of The American Revolution, New York: Vintage, 1991, pp. 244-245):

What alarmed the gentry of the 1760s and 1770s . . . were the growing ideologically backed claims by ordinary people to a share in the actual conduct of government. It was one thing for ordinary people to take part in a mob or to vote; for them to participate in the deliberations and decisions of government was quite another. . . . [T]he artisans were not content simply to be a pressure group. They wanted to make governmental decisions for themselves, and they now called for explicit representation of their interests in government. . . .

The traditional gentry no longer seemed capable of speaking for the interests of artisans or any other groups of ordinary people. "If ever therefore your rights are preserved," the mechanics told each other, "it must be through the virtue and integrity of the middling sort, as farmers, tradesmen, etc. who despise venality, and best know the sweets of liberty." Artisans, they said, could trust in government only spokesmen of their own kind.

18. Chomsky expanded on his views about specialized expertise in government planning -- and popular democracy in general -- in a 1976 interview on British television ("The Relevance of Anarcho-Syndicalism/The Jay Interview," in Noam Chomsky, Radical Priorities, Montreal: Black Rose, 1981, pp. 245-261 at p. 259):

I don't really believe that we need a separate bureaucracy to carry out governmental decisions. . . . [L]et's take expertise with regard to economic planning, because certainly in any complex industrial society there should be a group of technicians whose task is to produce plans, and to lay out the consequences of decisions, to explain to the people who have to make the decisions that if you decide this, you're going to likely get this consequence, because that's what your programming model shows, and so on. But the point is that those planning systems are themselves industries, and they will have their workers' councils and they will be part of the whole council system, and the distinction is that these planning systems do not make decisions, they produce plans in exactly the same way that automakers produce autos. The plans are then available for the workers' councils and council assemblies in the same way that autos are available to ride in. Now of course what this does require is an informed and educated working class, but that's precisely what we are capable of achieving in advanced industrial societies.

19. For samples of Rothbard's vision, see for example, Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty, New York: Macmillan, 1973, especially chs. 10-13. An excerpt (pp. 202, 210, 214-216, 220-221, 229, 269-270):

Abolition of the public sector means, of course, that all pieces of land, all land areas, including streets and roads, would be owned privately, by individuals, corporations, cooperatives, or any other voluntary groupings of individuals and capital. . . . Any maverick road owner who insisted on a left-hand drive or green for "stop" instead of "go" would soon find himself with numerous accidents, and the disappearance of customers and users. . . . [W]hat about driving on congested urban streets? How could this be priced? There are numerous possible ways. In the first place the downtown street owners might require anyone driving on their streets to buy a license. . . . Modern technology may make feasible the requirement that all cars equip themselves with a meter. . . . Professor Vickery has also suggested . . . T.V. cameras at the intersections of the most congested streets. . . .

[I]f police services were supplied on a free, competitive market . . . consumers would pay for whatever degree of protection they wish to purchase. The consumers who just want to see a policeman once in a while would pay less than those who want continuous patrolling, and far less than those who demand twenty-four-hour bodyguard service. . . . Any police firm that suffers from gross inefficiency would soon go bankrupt and disappear. . . . Free-market police would not only be efficient, they would have a strong incentive to be courteous and to refrain from brutality against either their clients or their clients' friends or customers. A private Central Park would be guarded efficiently in order to maximize park revenue. . . . Possibly, each individual would subscribe to a court service, paying a monthly premimum. . . . If a private firm owned Lake Erie, for example, then anyone dumping garbage in the lake would be promptly sued in the courts.

20. On British capitalists' discussions of the need to "create wants" in Jamaica after the abolition of slavery in the 1830s, see for example, Thomas Holt, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, especially 44-73. This study notes that as abolition was being prepared in Jamaica, British Member of Parliament Rigby Watson argued on June 10, 1833 (p. 54):

"To make them labour, and give them a taste for luxuries and comforts, they must be gradually taught to desire those objects which could be attained by human labour. There was a regular progress from the possession of necessaries to the desire of luxuries; and what once were luxuries, gradually came, among all classes and conditions of men, to be necessaries. This was the sort of progress the negroes had to go through, and this was the sort of education to which they ought to be subject in their period of probation [after emancipation]."

Similarly, John Daughtrey remarked (p. 71):

"Every step they take in this direction is a real improvement; artificial wants become in time real wants. The formation of such habits affords the best security for negro labour at the end of the apprenticeship."

The British leaders also addressed the problem of the fertile land that would be available to the newly freed slaves (p. 73):

Early in 1836, Lord Glenelg [the Colonial Secretary] forwarded to all the West Indian governors a dispatch addressing one of these policy problems. He began by noting that during slavery, labor could be compelled to be applied wherever the owner desired. Now, with the end of apprenticeship, the laborer would apply himself only to those tasks that promised personal benefit. Therefore, if the cultivation of sugar and coffee were to continue, "we must make it the immediate and apparent interest of the negro population to employ their labour in raising them." He was apprehensive about their ability to do this, repeating the now familiar maxim that given the demographic patterns of former slave colonies such as Jamaica -- "where there is land enough to yield an abundant subsistence to the whole population in return for slight labour" -- blacks would not work. . . . "Should things be left to their natural course, labour would not be attracted to the cultivation of exportable produce. . . ." Glenelg went on to prescribe the means by which the government would interdict these natural proclivities. It was essential that the ex-slaves be prevented from obtaining land.

21. For other examples of capitalists' conscious discussions of the necessity of "creating wants," see for example, Aviva Chomsky, West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870-1940, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. An excerpt (pp. 56-59):

[The United Fruit] company claimed in its propaganda that its role was to instill consumer values among its workers. . . . In 1929, Crowther, another United Fruit biographer, explicitly explained the importance of the spread of a consumer mentality as he waxed eloquent on the virtues of capitalism and bemoaned the immoral effects of a subsistence economy: "The mozos or working people [in Central America] have laboured only when forced to and that was not often, for the land would give them what little they needed." But this could be changed, he explained, by infusing these laborers with the desire for upward mobility. "The desire for goods, it may be remarked, is something that has to be cultivated. In the United States this desire has been cultivated. . . . American movies, radio, and especially magazines were everywhere, and "our advertising is slowly having the same effect as in the United States -- and it is reaching the mozos. For when a periodical is discarded, it is grabbed up, and its advertising pages turn up as wall paper in the thatched huts. I have seen the insides of huts completely covered with American magazine pages. . . . All of this is having its effect in awakening desires."

Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971. An excerpt (p. 158):

[T]he problem of introducing American pragmatism and efficiency involved confrontation with basic Haitian values and ambitions regarding work and material rewards for work. . . . Financial Adviser Arthur C. Millspaugh stated: "The peasants, living lives which to us seem indolent and shiftless, are enviably carefree and contented; but, if they are to be citizens of an independent self-governing nation, they must acquire, or at least a larger number of them must acquire, a new set of wants" [see Arthur Millspaugh (U.S. proconsul in Haiti), "Our Haitian Problem," Foreign Affairs, Vol. VII, No. 4, July 1929, pp. 556-570].

Angie Debo, And Still The Waters Run, New York: Gordian, 1966 (original 1940), especially pp. 20-30 (classic study discussing the U.S. government's efforts to drive an awareness of their true wants into the native population during its program of "Indian removal" and annexation). An excerpt (pp. 21-23):

Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, a distinguished Indian theorist, gave a glowing description of a visit of inspection he had recently made to the Indian Territory [in 1883]. The most partisan Indian would hardly have painted such an idealized picture of his people's happiness and prosperity and culture, but, illogically, the Senator advocated a change in this perfect society because it held the wrong principles of property ownership. Speaking apparently of the Cherokees, he said: "The head chief told us that there was not a family in that whole nation that had not a home of its own. There was not a pauper in that nation, and the nation did not owe a dollar. It built its own capitol, in which we had this examination, and it built its schools and its hospitals. Yet the defect of the system was apparent. They have gone as far as they can go, because they own their land in common. It is Henry George's system [George was a nineteenth-century American land reformer], and under that there is no enterprise to make your home any better than that of your neighbors. There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization. Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that each can own the land he cultivates, they will not make much more progress."

The Conference [of Eastern philanthropic "friends of the Indians"] accepted this viewpoint, and continued to advocate "reform" with all the earnestness of a moral crusade. Like Senator Dawes, the members based their opposition purely upon theoretical belief in the sanctity of private ownership rather than upon any understanding of the Indian nature or any investigation of actual conditions. With regard to Indians in general, their program in 1903 comprised . . . the division of the communal holdings among the individual Indians, to be held under the same conditions of taxation and freedom to alienate as the white man's farm. . . . In response to this faith in private ownership, Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887. It provided that Indian reservations should be allotted in 160-acre tracts to heads of families, 80 acres to unmarried adults, and 40 acres to children; and that the remainder should be purchased by the Government and thrown open to homestead entry.

Richard Ohmann, Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century, London: Verso, 1996 (on the escalating need for advertising commercial products at the turn of the century). See also chapter 10 of U.P. and its footnotes 74 to 80.

22. For a review of early vilification of Chomsky, see Christopher Hitchens, "The Chorus and Cassandra: What Everyone Knows About Noam Chomsky," Grand Street, Autumn 1985, pp. 106-131 (reprinted in Christopher Hitchens, Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports, New York: Hill and Wang, 1988, pp. 58-77).

23. For the Boston Globe's reaction to the International Days of Protest, see "The Viet Protests: From Boston to Waikiki Beach -- Cheers, Jeers, Eggs, Paint Greet Marching Thousands," Boston Globe, October 17, 1965, p. 1. The front page was divided in half, with coverage of the protest under the subheading "Those Who Walked . . ." and coverage of wounded Vietnam War veterans under the subheading " . . .Some Who Couldn't." Photos of four wheelchair-bound veterans accompanied the articles. This is a description of the demonstration in Boston:

The peace rally, planned as a climax to the well-organized march, came to grief as speakers tried vainly to make themselves heard. A crowd of 2000 spectators . . . were totally hostile to the marchers, greeting them with shouts of "Go into the Army," "Fight for your country," and "Go back to Russia. . . ."

When state Rep. Irving Fishman of Newton, a Democrat, rose to address the crowd, he could get only nine words out. . . . Angry shouts drowned out anything else he had to say. . . . [I]n the middle of it all, the Common rang out with echoes of "America the Beautiful," "God Bless America," the national anthem and other patriotic music.

The reaction was even more hostile in New York City and Berkeley:

In New York, a flying wedge of spectators cracked through police barricades and beat demonstrators to the pavement during a march of 13,000 persons down Fifth Ave. A gang of 35 "Hell's Angels," a notorious gang of California motor cycle riders, swarmed through police barricades and attacked marchers at Berkeley. . . .

[A] quart container of red paint was hurled at the first rank of demonstrators. It splattered over half a dozen marchers, drenching their hair, shoulders and clothes. Eggs flying from different directions splashed others. The marchers walked on unsmiling as shouts of "Treason, Treason!" came from spectators on the sidewalk. . . . Men and women were brought to the pavement by flying tackles and punches before police could restore order.

See also, "LBJ Deplores 'Peace' March," Boston Globe, October 19, 1965, p. 1.

Chomsky remarked in his 1967 essay "On Resistance" (American Power And The New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays, New York: Pantheon, 1969, pp. 370-371):

After the first International Days of Protest in October 1965, Senator [Mike] Mansfield criticized the "sense of utter irresponsibility" shown by the demonstrators. He had nothing to say then, nor has he since, about the "sense of utter irresponsibility" shown by Senator Mansfield and others who stand by quietly and vote appropriations as the cities and villages of North Vietnam are demolished, as millions of refugees in the South are driven from their homes by American bombardment. He has nothing to say about the moral standards or the respect for law of those who have permitted this tragedy. I speak of Senator Mansfield precisely because he is not a breast-beating superpatriot who wants America to rule the world, but is rather an American intellectual in the best sense, a scholarly and reasonable man -- the kind of man who is the terror of our age.

24. One commentator summarized the so-called "Faurisson affair" as follows (Milan Rai, Chomsky's Politics, London: Verso, 1995, pp. 131-132):

[Chomsky] regards academic freedom, and the freedom of expression, as absolute values, important in themselves. For such reasons, he "supported the rights of American war criminals not only to speak and teach but also to conduct their research, on grounds of academic freedom, at a time when their work was being used to murder and destroy." He later conceded that this was a position "that I am not sure I could defend."

Chomsky's most famous defence of academic freedom was in relation to the "Faurisson affair," when Robert Faurisson, a professor of French literature at the University of Lyons, was deprived of research facilities and driven from his position for denying that gas chambers were used to kill Jews under the Nazis. A court later convicted Faurisson of the crime of failing his "responsibility" as a historian, and "de laisser prendre en charge, par autrui, son discours dans une intention d'apologie des crimes de guerre ou d'incitation à la haine raciale," among other charges [i.e. letting others use his statements as an apology for war crimes or an inducement to racial hatred]. Chomsky, in the company of hundreds of others, signed a petition in 1979 deploring this infringement of academic freedom. Subsequently he wrote a short essay on the need to defend freedom of expression, which was used without his knowledge as the preface to a book about the gas chambers by Faurisson. Chomsky's critics used these actions in defence of Faurisson's civil rights to smear Chomsky as a supporter of Holocaust denial.

For samples of the English-language defamation campaign in the "Faurisson affair," see for example, Werner Cohn, The Hidden Alliances of Noam Chomsky, New York: Americans for a Safe Israel, 1988. An excerpt (pp. 1-2):

[T]he fact that he also maintains important connections with the neo-Nazi movement of our time -- that he is, in a certain sense, the most important patron of that movement -- is well known only in France. . . . [D]enials have not prevented [Chomsky] from prolonged and varied political collaboration with the neo-Nazi movement. . . .

One characteristic of Chomsky's political writings that does raise immediate questions about his judgment is his obvious animus toward the United States and Israel. He occasionally says bad things about most of the governments of the world but it is Israel and the United States for which he reserves his extraordinary vitriol. Chomsky is careful not to justify Hitler explicitly but his writings create the impression that the Nazis could not have been any worse than the "war criminals" of the United States and Israel today. Moreover, and this is indeed curious, almost all references to Nazis in his books turn out to be denunciations of Nazi-like behavior on the part of Israelis.

Nadine Fresco, "The Denial of the Dead: On the Faurisson Affair," Dissent, Fall 1981, pp. 467f. An excerpt (p. 470):

You, Noam Chomsky, believe in the existence of the gas chambers: but is this mere opinion . . .? Wishing to teach the intolerant French a lesson, Chomsky incessantly refers them to their own classics, specifically to Voltaire [who wrote: "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write"]. I cannot help but be annoyed (in a manner entirely irrational) by the fact that in this Faurisson affair, which, admittedly, has a little something to do with anti-Semitism . . . Chomsky chooses as a model someone who in 1745 wrote about the Jews: "You will not find in them anything but an ignorant and barbarous people who have for a long time combined the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition."

Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "A Paper Eichmann?," democracy, April 1981, pp. 70f. An excerpt (pp. 94-95):

What is scandalous about this petition [that Chomsky signed] is that it doesn't for one moment ask whether what Faurisson says is true or false; and it even describes his findings as though they were the result of serious historical research. Of course, it can be contended that everybody has the right to lie and "bear false witness," a right that is inseparable from the liberty of the individual and recognized, in the liberal tradition, as due the accused for his defense. But the right that a "false witness" [i.e. Faurisson] may claim should not be granted him in the name of truth.

Martin Peretz, "Washington Diarist," New Republic, January 3, 1981, p. 38. An excerpt:

I mentioned Chomsky in this space with reference to his apologetics on behalf of the Honorable Pol Pot. . . . His latest departure from linguistics . . . [is] Chomsky's little epistle in Faurisson's defense. . . . On the question . . . as to whether or not six million Jews were murdered, Noam Chomsky apparently is an agnostic.

Peretz then further claims that Chomsky denies freedom of expression to his opponents, referring to Chomsky's comment that one degrades oneself by entering into debate over certain issues -- apparently reasoning that if one refuses to debate you, they constrain your freedom. Peretz is careful to conceal the example which Chomsky cited when making this comment: the Holocaust.

For the context of Chomsky's remark about "degrading oneself by entering into debate over certain issues," see Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins: Historical and Political Essays, New York: Pantheon, 1969. An excerpt (pp. 8-9):

During these years, I have taken part in more conferences, debates, forums, teach-ins, meetings on Vietnam and American imperialism than I care to remember. Perhaps I should mention that, increasingly, I have had a certain feeling of falseness in these lectures and discussions. This feeling does not have to do with the intellectual issues. The basic facts are clear enough; the assessment of the situation is as accurate as I can make it. But the entire performance is emotionally and morally false in a disturbing way.

It is a feeling that I have occasionally been struck by before. I remember reading an excellent study of Hitler's East European policies a number of years ago in a mood of grim fascination. The author was trying hard to be cool and scholarly and objective, to stifle the only human response to a plan to enslave and destroy millions of subhuman organisms so that the inheritors of the spiritual values of Western civilization would be free to develop a higher form of society in peace. Controlling this elementary human reaction, we enter into a technical debate with the Nazi intelligentsia: Is it technically feasible to dispose of millions of bodies? What is the evidence that the Slavs are inferior beings? Must they be ground under foot or returned to their "natural" home in the East so that this great culture can flourish, to the benefit of all mankind? Is it true that the Jews are a cancer eating away at the vitality of the German people? and so on. Without awareness, I found myself drawn into this morass of insane rationality -- inventing arguments to counter and demolish the constructions of the Bormanns and the Rosenbergs.

By entering into the arena of argument and counterargument, of technical feasibility and tactics, of footnotes and citations, by accepting the presumption of legitimacy of debate on certain issues, one has already lost one's humanity. This is the feeling I find almost impossible to repress when going through the motions of building a case against the American war in Vietnam.

For other remarks about the Holocaust in Chomsky's early writings, see Noam Chomsky, At War With Asia: Essays on Indochina, New York: Pantheon, 1974 (quotation from a 1970 essay). An excerpt (p. 307):

[O]ne cannot compare American policy [in the Indochina wars] to that of Nazi Germany, as of 1942. It would be more difficult to argue that American policy is not comparable to that of fascist Japan, or of Germany prior to the "final solution." There may be those who are prepared to tolerate any policy less ghastly than crematoria and death camps and to reserve their horror for the particular forms of criminal insanity perfected by the Nazi technicians. Others will not lightly disregard comparisons which, though harsh, may well be accurate. Nazi Germany was sui generis, of that there is no doubt. But we should have the courage and honesty to face the question whether the principles applied to Nazi Germany and fascist Japan do not, as well, apply to the American war in Vietnam.

Noam Chomsky, Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood, New York: Vintage, 1974, pp. 57-58 (the Zionist case "relies on the aspirations of a people who suffered two millennia of exile and savage persecution culminating in the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history").

For further discussion of the "Faurisson affair," see for example, Christopher Hitchens, "The Chorus and Cassandra: What Everyone Knows About Noam Chomsky," Grand Street, Autumn 1985, pp. 119-125; Brian Morton, "Chomsky Then and Now," Nation, May 7, 1988, pp. 646-652; Noam Chomsky, Réponses inédites à mes détracteurs Parisiens, Paris: Spartacus, n/d; Noam Chomsky, "The Faurisson Affair: His Right to Say It," Nation, February 28, 1981, pp. 231f. An excerpt (pp. 232-234):

I have taken far more controversial stands than this in support of civil liberties and academic freedom. At the height of the Vietnam war, I publicly took the stand that people I believe are authentic war criminals should not be denied the right to teach on political or ideological grounds, and I have always taken the same stand with regard to scientists who "prove" that blacks are genetically inferior, in a country where their history is hardly pleasant, and where such views will be used by racists and neo-Nazis. Whatever one thinks of Faurisson, no one has accused him of being the architect of major war crimes or claiming that Jews are genetically inferior (though it is irrelevant to the civil-liberties issue, he writes of the "heroic insurrection of the Warsaw ghetto" and praises those who "fought courageously against Nazism" in "the right cause"). I even wrote in 1969 that it would be wrong to bar counterinsurgency research in the universities, though it was being used to murder and destroy, a position that I am not sure I could defend. What is interesting is that these far more controversial stands never aroused a peep of protest, which shows that the refusal to accept the right of free expression without retaliation, and the horror when others defend this right, is rather selective. . . .

It seems to me something of a scandal that it is even necessary to debate these issues two centuries after Voltaire defended the right of free expression for views he detested. It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers.

Asked years later in an interview if, in retrospect, he would not have written the statement on freedom of speech which was included as a "preface" to Faurisson's book -- without Chomsky's advance knowledge -- Chomsky responded (Noam Chomsky, Chronicles of Dissent: Interviewed by David Barsamian, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1992, p. 264):

If you ask me, should I have done it, I'll answer, yes. In retrospect, would it have been better not to do it, maybe. Only in the sense that it would have given less opportunity for people of the Dershowitz variety [Harvard law professor, discussed in footnote 27 of this chapter], who are very much committed to preventing free speech on the Arab-Israel issues, and free exchange of ideas.

I don't know. You could say on tactical grounds maybe yes, but that's not the way to proceed, in my view. You should do what you think is right and not what's going to be tactically useful.

For comparison with reactions to the exposure of Nazis in George Bush's 1988 election campaign and to the Reagan administration's opposition to a Holocaust education program, see chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnotes 37, 38 and 39.

25. For samples of the defamation campaign concerning Chomsky's writings on Cambodia, see for example, Stephen Morris, "Chomsky on U.S. foreign policy," Harvard International Review, December-January 1981, pp. 3f (and the exchange of letters in the April-May 1981 issue). An excerpt (pp. 4, 27, 30-31):

Once the evidence of Indochinese Communist behavior began to accumulate . . . [Chomsky's] response was to deny the evidence of repression. . . . The work under review, The Political Economy of Human Rights . . . is the most extensive rewriting of a period of contemporary history ever produced in a nontotalitarian society. . . .

[T]he moral climax of the Chomsky-Herman book [is] their apologies for Pol Pot. . . . [F]or the entire period since 1975 Chomsky has devoted an enormous amount of his time to the task of trying to discredit accounts of repression in Indochina, while promoting accounts which paint a more benign picture of the new orders. . . . [The] revelations of horror stirred Professor Chomsky to write in defense of Pol Pot. The 160 pages of The Political Economy of Human Rights which deal with Cambodia represent the most recent and extensive effort in this vein. . . . [Chomsky and Edward Herman] are totalitarian political ideologues, with an intense emotional commitment to the cause of anti-Americanism. Operating on the principle that "my enemy's enemy is my friend" they have wholeheartedly embraced the struggle of two of the world's most ruthlessly brutal regimes [i.e. Cambodia and Vietnam].

Fred Barnes, "My Change Of Heart: Coming around to the noble cause," New Republic, April 29, 1985, pp. 11-12. An excerpt (p. 12):

Who among [the leaders of the antiwar movement] has been willing to suggest that the murder of a million or more Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge might have been averted if American military force had not been removed from Indochina? If any of them spoke out that way, I missed it. But I did hear Noam Chomsky seek to prove the Cambodian genocide hadn't happened.

Geoffrey Sampson, "Censoring 20th Century Culture: the case of Noam Chomsky," New Criterion, October 1984, pp. 7-16 (and see the exchange of letters in the January 1985 issue, and commentary on it in Alexander Cockburn, "Beat The Devil," Nation, December 22, 1984, p. 670, as well as the exchange of letters in the Nation on March 2, 1985, p. 226); Leopold Labedz, "Under Western Eyes: Chomsky Revisited," Encounter, July 1980, pp. 28f (an article which, together with many inventions and falsifications about Chomsky's stance on the Cambodian genocide, also is notable for its apologetics for the Western-backed atrocities in East Timor). Chomsky points out with regard to Labedz's article (Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston: South End, 1989, p. 383 n.31):

That the lies were conscious in this case is indicated by the fact that the journal refused to permit a response that exposed the falsifications point by point, so that the article can therefore be quoted, reprinted with acclaim, etc. It is standard for dissidents to be denied the right of response to personal attacks, and it is reasonable to suppose that in such cases the journal recognizes the need for protection of fabrications that would be all too readily exposed if response were not barred.

Chomsky and Edward Herman stated their thesis in the opening pages of their chapter "Cambodia," in Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology -- The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume II, Boston: South End, 1979, pp. 135-136, 139-140:

[I]n the case of Cambodia, there is no difficulty in documenting major atrocities and oppression, primarily from the reports of refugees, since Cambodia has been almost entirely closed to the West since the war's end. One might imagine that in the United States, which bears a major responsibility for what Francois Ponchaud calls "the calvary [i.e. crucifixion] of a people," reporting and discussion would be tinged with guilt and regret. That has rarely been the case, however. The U.S. role and responsibility have been quickly forgotten or even explicitly denied as the mills of the propaganda machine grind away. . . . [On this "role and responsibility," see chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 61 to 65.]

The record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial and often gruesome, but it has by no means satisfied the requirements of Western propagandists, who must labor to shift the blame for the torment of Indochina to the victims of France and the United States. Consequently, there has been extensive fabrication of evidence, a tide that is not stemmed even by repeated exposure. Furthermore, more tempered and cautious assessments are given little notice, as is evidence that runs contrary to the chorus of denunciation that has dominated the Western media. The coverage of real and fabricated atrocities in Cambodia also stands in dramatic contrast to the silence with regard to atrocities comparable in scale within U.S. domains -- Timor, for example [on the media's coverage of East Timor, see chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnotes 40 and 42]. This coverage has conferred on that land of much suffering [Cambodia] the distinction of being perhaps the most extensively reported Third World country in U.S. journalism. At the same time, propagandists in the press and elsewhere, recognizing a good thing when they see it, like to pretend that their lone and courageous voice of protest can barely be heard, or alternatively, that controversy is raging about events in postwar Cambodia. . . . As in the other cases discussed, our primary concern here is not to establish the facts with regard to postwar Indochina, but rather to investigate their refraction through the prism of Western ideology, a very different task.

In the third-to-last paragraph of the chapter, the authors also stressed (p. 293):

When the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct. But even if that turns out to be the case, it will in no way alter the conclusions we have reached on the central question addressed here: how the available facts were selected, modified, or sometimes invented to create a certain image offered to the general population.

The same point also was made in the first volume of Chomsky's and Herman's study (Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism -- The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, Boston: South End, 1979, p. 130):

It is instructive to compare Western reaction to these two instances of reported bloodbaths. In the case of Cambodia reported atrocities have not only been eagerly seized upon by the Western media but also embellished by statistical fabrications -- which, interestingly, persist even after they are exposed. The case of Timor is radically different. The media have shown no interest in examining the atrocities of the Indonesian invaders, though even in absolute numbers these are on the same scale as those reported by sources of comparable credibility concerning Cambodia, and relative to the population, are many times as great.

Chomsky comments (Deterring Democracy, New York: Hill and Wang, 1991, pp. 380-381):

The reaction to the exposure [of the differing media treatment of the East Timor and Cambodia genocides] is also instructive: on the Timor half of the comparison, further silence, denial, and apologetics; on the Cambodia half, a great chorus of protest claiming that we were denying or downplaying Pol Pot atrocities. This was a transparent falsehood, though admittedly the distinction between advocating that one try to keep to the truth and downplaying the atrocities of the official enemy is a difficult one for the mind of the commissar, who, furthermore, is naturally infuriated by any challenge to the right to lie in the service of the state, particularly when it is accompanied by a demonstration of the services rendered to ongoing atrocities.

For a review of the defamation campaign about Chomsky's writings on Cambodia, see Christopher Hitchens, "The Chorus and Cassandra: What Everyone Knows About Noam Chomsky," Grand Street, Autumn 1985, pp. 107-119. On the case of Cambodia, see Chapter 3 of U.P.

26. For Chomsky's stance on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, see chapter 4 of U.P.; chapter 5 of U.P.; and chapter 8 of U.P.

27. Chomsky received his Anti-Defamation League file from an A.D.L. employee who disapproved of the practice when it was being sent to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, in preparation for a debate between them -- at which Dershowitz then used the defamatory material that was concocted by the A.D.L.'s surveillance system. See Noam Chomsky, Chronicles of Dissent: Interviewed by David Barsamian, Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1992, pp. 29-30. Dershowitz's particular commitment to defaming Chomsky -- which presumably stems in part from Chomsky's exposure of outright lies about an Israeli court determination that Dershowitz had been advancing in the Boston Globe, resulting in the Globe ombudsman's determination that the paper would no longer publish Dershowitz's letters -- also is discussed on pp. 259-261 of Chronicles of Dissent.

For samples of Dershowitz's attacks on Chomsky, see for example, Alan M. Dershowitz, Chutzpah, Boston: Little, Brown, 1991. An excerpt (pp. 174, 177, 201):

Professor Noam Chomsky, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a well-known linguist and anti-Zionist zealot, was asked to join in protesting Faurisson's suspension. I am sure that he welcomed the opportunity, because Faurisson's writings and speeches are stridently anti-Zionist as well as anti-Semitic. Indeed, Professor Chomsky has himself made statements about Zionist exploitation of the tragedy of World War II that are not, in my view, so different from some of those of Faurisson. Chomsky immediately sprang to Faurisson's defense, not only on the issue of free speech, but on the merits of his "scholarship" and of his "character. . . ." One is left to speculate about Chomsky's motives -- political and psychological -- for becoming so embroiled in the substantive defense of a neo-Nazi Holocaust denier. . . .

Noam Chomsky continues to be a popular speaker at universities. His anti-American, anti-Israel, antiwestern, and somewhat paranoid world view will always have a kind of superficial hold on college sophomores. But the attraction rarely extends into the junior year.

Alan M. Dershowitz, "Leftist Cacophony For Human Rights Grows Silent On The Beijing Massacre," Op-Ed, Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1989, p. 5. An excerpt:

Chomsky, who rarely lets a day go by without some joyful condemnation of Western democracies, and who has defended Holocaust deniers against charges of anti-Semitism, has been silent about China [after the Tiananmen Square massacre], according to his secretary. . . .

The next time you read or hear condemnation of the United States, Israel or other Western democracies from the likes of [radical criminal defense lawyer William] Kunstler, Chomsky, the P.L.O. and the National Lawyers Guild, remember their selective silence in the face of one of the most inexcusable human-rights violations in recent years.

Chomsky responded to this article by Dershowitz as follows (Noam Chomsky, "Criticism of Socialist Nations For Rights Violations By The Left," Letter, Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1989, "Metro section," p. 9):

For 16 years, I have been correcting published lies by Dershowitz, beginning with his vicious defamation of a leading Israeli civil-libertarian. I condemned the massacre in Beijing at once in radio interviews. My first opportunity to comment in print was in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, where I was invited to write about Gorbachev's reforms and took the occasion (June 7) to add a condemnation of the use of "deadly force" against "popular struggles for democracy and human rights," citing Tian An Men Square and Tbilisi. His reference to my secretary apparently has to do with a call from the Boston Herald asking if I had released a statement on the killings in Beijing. Of course I had not; I have never released a statement on any event, ever.

In contrast, I have (to my regret) been silent for long periods (or always) about atrocities in U.S. domains and elsewhere, among them, U.S. atrocities in Indochina, the U.S.-supported slaughter in Timor, the Sabra-Shatila massacre, etc. To cite merely one example relevant here, in June, 1980, the army of El Salvador invaded the national university, killing the rector, dozens of faculty members, and unknown numbers of students, wrecking libraries and laboratories, burning down the humanities building, etc. I mentioned nothing for 5 years. I am sorry to say that this list could go on and on. Notice that I do not, reciprocally, condemn Dershowitz for his failure to issue public statements on horrendous atrocities; that would be as idiotic as his charges, since, plainly, no human being does this.

Dershowitz's second charge is his rendition of my carefully qualified statement that denial of the existence of gas chambers is not, per se, proof of anti-Semitism; and more generally, that we cannot automatically deduce racist intent from denial or minimization of atrocities, whatever the scale, for example, denial of U.S. atrocities in Indochina, Dershowitz's apologetics for torture and repression in Israel, the denial by scholars of the Armenian genocide and the slaughter of millions of Native Americans, the serious underestimate of Pol Pot's killings by the C.I.A., etc. Racism is too important a phenomenon to be cheapened by exploitation as a political weapon.

Dershowitz is quite right, for once, in saying that we should have a single standard for compliance for human rights. It would be a welcome change if he would begin to observe this principle instead of publishing absurd lies concerning those who do not accept his doctrinal commitments and shameful double standard.

28. On the exposure of some of the Anti-Defamation League's "intelligence" activities, see for example, Dennis King and Chip Berlet, "ADLgate," Tikkun, July, 1993, p. 31. An excerpt:

On April 9, newspaper readers across the nation learned that, the day before, police had raided the San Francisco and Los Angeles offices of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. . . . It is now the focus of a mushrooming scandal which involves alleged possession of stolen police intelligence files and alleged spying on liberal social-action organizations. . . . According to newspaper reports, other indictments may be imminent in a probe of the A.D.L.'s alleged receipt of confidential data from up to twenty police law enforcement agencies in California alone. The A.D.L. may also face numerous criminal charges for allegedly concealing payments to A.D.L. operatives in violation of California unemployment laws. . . . The San Francisco D.A. has released about 700 pages of police and F.B.I. interviews and documents seized from subjects of the investigations, providing a detailed picture of an organization whose monitoring of extremists has veered out of control.

Roy Bullock has been an A.D.L. operative since 1954. He also appears to have sold information on anti-apartheid activists to the South African government while simultaneously keeping tabs on the same activists for the A.D.L. itself. There is evidence that Bullock had compiled "pinko" files on hundreds of liberal social-action organizations with no relationship to bigotry, including Greenpeace, the N.A.A.C.P., Act Up, New Jewish Agenda, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

29. For Chomsky's article critiquing Israeli policies, see Noam Chomsky, "Letter to a Friend," Ha'aretz (Israel), February 4, 1994 (reprinted as "L'Accord d'Oslo, Vicié au Départ: Une Lettre de Noam Chomsky 'à un ami Israélian,'" Courier International, No. 174, March 3-9, 1994).

30. On Chomsky's access to national media, see for example, Milan Rai, Chomsky's Politics, London: Verso, 1995. An excerpt (p. 2):

[C]onsider the reaction to Chomsky's examination in the Fateful Triangle of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Barely mentioned in the U.S. press, the book was reviewed in every major journal in Canada, and in many minor journals, including the Financial Post, Canada's equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. The book was also reviewed in the Canadian equivalents of Time and Newsweek. Chomsky comments, "If the judgement is one of quality, then it's striking that the judgement is so different across the border."

Christopher Hitchens investigated the treatment of The Fateful Triangle in some depth: "Consider: One of America's best-known Jewish scholars, internationally respected, writes a lengthy, dense, highly documented book about United States policy in the Levant. The book is acidly critical of Israeli policy and of the apparently limitless American self-deception as to its true character. It quotes sources in Hebrew and French as well as in English. It is published at a time when hundreds of United States marines have been killed in Beirut and when the President is wavering in his commitment, which itself threatens to become a major election issue. It is the only book of its scope (we need make no judgement as to depth) to appear in the continental United States. The screens and the headlines are full of approximations and guesses on the subject. Yet, at this unusually fortunate juncture for publication, the following newspapers review it: (1) the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner; (2) the Boston Globe. . . ." Note that the Canadian reviews of the Fateful Triangle were generally hostile. What is significant is that in Canada, Chomsky's position is regarded as part of the debate, to be taken seriously. In the United States, he is excluded from the discussion completely.

For rare coverage of Chomsky and his ideas in mainstream sources in the U.S., see for example, Anthony Flint, "Divided legacy: Noam Chomsky's theory of linguistics revolutionized the field, but his radical political analysis is what gave him a cult following; When people mention his name a century from now, which Chomsky will they mean?," Boston Globe Magazine, November 19, 1995, pp. 25f; "Jerry Brown Interviews Noam Chomsky," Spin, August 1993, pp. 68f; Charles M. Young, "Noam Chomsky: Anarchy in the U.S.A.," Rolling Stone, May 28, 1992, pp. 42f; Noam Chomsky on "Pozner & Donahue," April 20 & 22, 1993, C.N.B.C. T.V., 9 p.m.; John Horgan, "Free Radical: A word (or two) about linguist Noam Chomsky," Scientific American, May 1990, pp. 40f; Betty Sue Flowers, ed., Bill Moyers: A World of Ideas -- Conversations with Thoughtful Men and Women about American Life Today and the Ideas Shaping our Future, New York: Doubleday, 1989, pp. 38f (transcript of an interview on P.B.S.); Walter LaFeber, "Whose News?," New York Times Book Review, November 6, 1988, p. 27. See also, Jay Parini, "Noam Is An Island," Mother Jones, October 1988, pp. 36f; Brian Morton, "Chomsky Then and Now," Nation, May 7, 1988, pp. 646f.

31. On Warner Communications's suppression of Chomsky's and Herman's book and destruction of its publisher, see "A Prefatory Note by the Authors on the History of the Suppression of the First Edition of This Book," in Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism -- The Political Economy of Human Rights: Volume I, Boston: South End, 1979, pp. xiv-xvii; Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Boston: Beacon, 5th edition, 1997 (original 1983), pp. 32-34. The original edition had been published as Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda, Andover, MA: Warner Modular Publications, 1973, Module No. 57 (preface by Richard Falk); the authors then expanded it into the two-volume The Political Economy of Human Rights. The original book was published in France as Bains de Sang constructifs dans les faits et la propagande, Paris: Éditions Seghers/Laffont, 1974.

32. On the Homestead strike, see for example, Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992, especially chs. 15 and 21. An excerpt (pp. 332, 17, 322, 326):

[E]xtraordinary solidarity and communal strength [was] exhibited by the steelworkers and their friends during the summer of 1892. . . . [S]teelworkers, for the first time in the town's history, held an outright majority on the town council; they also served as chairmen of its most important committees. Moreover, beyond personal friendships, the institutional ties that linked skilled and unskilled workers and Anglo-Americans and East Europeans were tighter than ever. . . . Homestead's elaborate defense system was under the control of the workers' Advisory Committee. . . . But in the frenzy of the Pinkertons' [armed men hired by the company] imminent landing, the committee -- at this point directed by Hugh O'Donnell, a heater in the 119-inch plate mill -- lost control, and the responsibility for Homestead's defense passed to the townspeople in general. . . .

Just as scholars have ignored the organized participation of East-European immigrants in the Homestead Lockout, so, too, have the initiatives of women been overlooked. This, in the face of overwhelming evidence that they were quick to defend the town when the Pinkertons landed, and that they worked side by side with the men. In fact, the most famous iconographic image we have of the lockout prominently features women; arms raised, mouths open, fists clenched, they stand in the front lines of the crowd as the surrendering Pinkertons are marched into town from the steelworks. . . . The Homestead women's assertion of their power and rights, of their place and stake in the workers' republic, signaled . . . that they had refused to be domesticated, interiorized, or harnessed for the purpose of lovely embroidery. Rather, they chose to break the conventions of female behavior by going into the streets, asserting themselves in word and even deed.

On the general defeats of the labor movement during the period, see for example, Jeremy Brecher, Strike!, Cambridge, MA: South End, 1997 (revised and updated edition; original 1972), chs. 1 to 3; Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present, New York: HarperCollins, 1980 (revised and updated edition 1995), chs. 10 and 11.

33. For Bailey's remark, see Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, New York: Appleton, 1969 (eighth edition). His exact words (p. 163):

The ending of the Napoleonic nightmare thus left the American people free to work out their own destiny with a minimum of foreign meddling. Responding to the robust new sense of nationalism engendered by the War of 1812, they turned their backs confidently on the Old World, and concentrated on the task of felling trees and Indians and of rounding out their national boundaries.

On scholarship about the Native American genocide, see chapter 4 of U.P. and its footnotes 72 and 76.

34. On Adam Smith's advocating markets because he thought that they would lead to equality, see Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976 (original 1776). An excerpt (Book I, ch. X, p. 111):

The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality. If in the same neighbourhood, there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments. This at least would be the case in a society where things were left to follow their natural course, where there was perfect liberty, and where every man was perfectly free both to chuse what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought proper.

Patricia Werhane, Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. An excerpt (p. 106):

[Smith] believes that ideally, competition should be among parties of similar advantage. A system of perfect liberty, he argues, should create a situation in which "the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock . . . be either perfectly equal or continually tending to equality." Smith sees perfect liberty as a necessary but not a sufficient condition for competition, but perfect competition occurs only when both parties in the exchange are on more or less equal grounds, whether it be competition for labor, jobs, consumers, or capital.

35. George Stigler's misrepresentation of Smith's attitudes, in the University of Chicago's 1976 edition of The Wealth of Nations, is illustrated, for example, by a comparison of Stigler's account of Smith's views about the American colonies with Smith's actual text. Stigler claims that Smith "believed that there was, indeed, exploitation . . . but of the English by the colonists" (p. xiii of the Preface). In reality, Smith argued that there was "very grievous" exploitation of both the American colonists and of "the great body of the people" of England, by the policies of "a particular order of men in Great Britain," the "merchants and manufacturers," whose interests were "most peculiarly attended to" by the colonial system of which they were the "principal architects." For a more complete quotation from Smith on this point, see footnote 1 of chapter 5 of U.P.

For another example of how Stigler misrepresents Smith's text, compare the passage from The Wealth of Nations on what Smith says is "in every age of the world" "the vile maxim of the masters of mankind," "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people" -- to which Smith ascribes the decline of feudal barons, who "had no disposition to share" their wealth "either with tenants or retainers," but instead desired for themselves "diamond buckles" and other luxuries which "were to be all their own" (quoted in footnote 91 of chapter 10 of U.P.) -- with Stigler's superficial and sanitized account of the point of that passage (pp. xii-xiii of the Preface):

Quite remarkable emphasis is put upon the influence of people's earning and spending activities on the way societies evolve: the luxury of feudal lords is credited with the decline of their power as they replaced retinues of armed followers by shoes with diamond buckles. Truly they booted their power away!

36. For Adam Smith's view of division of labor, see Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976 (original 1776). An excerpt (Book V, ch. I, pt. III, art. II, pp. 302-303):

In the progress of the division of labour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations; frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments.

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. . . . His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intellectual, social, and martial values. But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it.

This passage is indeed not listed under "division of labour" in the index to the University of Chicago Press's bicentennial edition (p. 510).

37. For some of Humboldt's commentary, see J.W. Burrow, ed., Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1969. An excerpt (pp. 24, 27-28):

Now man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as what he does; and the labourer who tends a garden is perhaps in a truer sense its owner, than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits. . . . An interesting man . . . is interesting in all situations and all activities, though he only attains the most matured and graceful consummation of his activity, when his way of life is harmoniously in keeping with his character. In view of this consideration, it seems as if all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into artists; that is, men who love their labour for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures. And so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, though beautiful in themselves, so often serve to degrade it. . . .

But, still, freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable condition, without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature, can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.

38. For Tocqueville's statement, see Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, New York: Knopf, 1948, Vol. II, Book II, ch. XX (original 1835). The exact words (pp. 158-159, 161):

When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but at the same time he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. He every day becomes more adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said of him that in proportion as the workman improves, the man is degraded. What can be expected of a man who has spent twenty years of his life in making heads for pins . . .? In proportion as the principle of division of labor is more extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more narrow-minded, and more dependent. The art advances, the artisan recedes. . . .

The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public. . . . I am of opinion, on the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest that ever existed in the world. . . . [T]he friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction.

39. In 1936 George Orwell was in Spain fighting against the Fascist army of General Francisco Franco. He described his initial impressions of Barcelona, one of the places where a popular revolution was still underway when he arrived, as follows (George Orwell, Homage To Catalonia, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980 (original 1938), pp. 4-5):

[T]he aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said "Señor" or "Don" or even "Usted"; everyone called everyone else "Comrade" and "Thou," and said "Salud!" instead of "Buenos dias." Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from an hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor cars, they had all been commandeered, and all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black.

The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no "well-dressed" people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of the militia uniform.

All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.

It was similar when Orwell reached the Aragon front of the Civil War (pp. 103-104):

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality and even in practice it was not far from it. . . .

Many of the normal motives of civilized life -- snobbishness, money grubbing, fear of the boss, etc. -- had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.

Orwell also wrote of Barcelona in 1936 (p. 6):

Yet so far as one can judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the barbers' shops were Anarchist notices (the barbers were mostly Anarchists) solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves. In the streets were colored posters appealing to prostitutes to stop being prostitutes.

To anyone from the hard-boiled, sneering civilization of the English-speaking races there was something rather pathetic in the literalness with which these idealistic Spaniards took the hackneyed phrases of revolution. At that time revolutionary ballads of the naïvest kind, all about proletarian brotherhood and the wickedness of Mussolini, were being sold on the streets for a few centimes each. I have often seen an illiterate militiaman buy one of these ballads, laboriously spell out the words, and then, when he had got the hang of it, begin singing it to an appropriate tune.

By April 1937, however, the situation had begun to change as the counter-revolution intensified (pp. 109-111):

Everyone who has made two visits, at intervals of months, to Barcelona during the war has remarked upon the extraordinary changes that took place in it. And curiously enough, whether they went there first in August and again in January, or, like myself, first in December and again in April, the thing they said was always the same: that the revolutionary atmosphere had vanished. No doubt to anyone who had been there in August, when the blood was scarcely dry in the streets and the militia were quartered in the small hotels, Barcelona in December would have seemed bourgeois; to me, fresh from England, it was liker to a workers' city than anything I had conceived possible. Now the tide had rolled back. Once again it was an ordinary city, a little pinched and chipped by war, but with no outward sign of working-class predominance. . . . Fat prosperous men, elegant women, and sleek cars were everywhere. . . . The officers of the new Popular Army, a type that had scarcely existed when I left Barcelona, swarmed in surprising numbers . . . [wearing] an elegant khaki uniform with a tight waist, like a British Army officer's uniform, only a little more so. I do not suppose that more than one in twenty of them had yet been to the front, but all of them had automatic pistols strapped to their belts; we, at the front, could not get pistols for love or money. . . .

A deep change had come over the town. There were two facts that were the keynote of all else. One was that the people -- the civil population -- had lost much of their interest in the war; the other was that the normal division of society into rich and poor, upper class and lower class, was reasserting itself.

See also, Franz Borkenau, The Spanish Cockpit: An Eye-Witness Account of the Political and Social Conflicts of the Spanish Civil War, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963 (another illuminating eyewitness account of the period).

40. On the experimentation that preceded the Spanish Revolution, see for example, Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years, 1868-1936, New York: Harper and Row, 1977; Sam Dolgoff, ed., The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936-1939, Montreal: Black Rose, 1990 (documentary history of the Spanish anarchist collectives); Karl Korsch, "Collectivisation in Spain," Living Marxism, Vol. 4, April 1939, pp. 179-182 (sympathetic summary of the book Collectivizations: l'oeuvre constructive de la Révolution Espagnole, Barcelona: Éditions C.N.T.-F.A.I., 1937/Toulouse: Éditions C.N.T., 1965, a collection of original documents on "the methods and results of collectivisation in the industrially most advanced province of Spain" during the revolution). See also, Burnett Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage: The Communist Conspiracy in the Spanish Civil War, New York: Praeger, 1961; Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Revolution: The Left and the Struggle for Power during the Civil War, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979; Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

41. On the British "experiment" in India, see chapter 7 of U.P. and its footnotes 46 and 47. On the "capitalist reforms" in Eastern Europe, see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 10.

For other case studies of the effects of externally imposed "development" programs, see for example, Kevin Danaher, ed., 50 Years Is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Boston: South End, 1994 (chapters reviewing the impact of World Bank and I.M.F. policies on Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Jamaica, Ghana, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Hungary, Kenya, and other countries).

Some insight into so-called "development economists'" general outlook towards the Third World can be gained from a confidential memo by the World Bank's Chief Economist, Harvard professor Lawrence Summers, which was leaked to the Economist magazine -- see "Let Them Eat Pollution," Economist (London), February 8, 1992, p. 66. This internal memorandum, which was sent to Summers's World Bank colleagues on December 12, 1991, made the following statements, among others:

Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the L.D.C.s [Less Developed Countries]? . . .I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. . . . I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low [sic] compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. . . .

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in L.D.C.s (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.

The Economist's editors comment that "Mr. Summers is asking questions that the World Bank would rather ignore" -- but that, "on the economics, his points are hard to answer."

See also, "Pollution and the Poor," Economist (London), February 15, 1992, p. 18 ("The [World] Bank says that Mr. Summers, one of America's best economists, was merely trying to provoke debate"); Lawrence Summers, "Polluting the Poor," Letter, Economist (London), February 15, 1992, p. 6. Confronted with the memo, Summers stated:

[I]t is not my view, the World Bank's view, or that of any sane person that pollution should be encouraged anywhere, or that the dumping of untreated toxic wastes near the homes of poor people is morally or economically defensible. My memo tried to sharpen the debate on important issues by taking as narrow-minded an economic perspective as possible. As its addressees understood, its intent was not to make policy recommendations, but only to clarify what had been a rather vague internal discussion.

Elsewhere, Summers called the memorandum a "sarcastic response" to another World Bank draft -- see "Furor on Memo At World Bank," New York Times, February 7, 1992, p. D2.