Chapter Seven

Intellectuals and Social Change

1. On the dismantling of the incipient socialist institutions in Russia, and for Lenin's and Trotsky's writings setting forth their thinking, see footnote 3 of this chapter.

2. On Lenin's and Trotsky's assumptions about revolution in Germany being required before socialism could develop in Russia, see for example, Moshe Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle, New York: Pantheon, 1968, p. 4 (quoting Lenin to indicate that, until his last days, he believed socialism could be achieved only after revolutions had occurred in the advanced capitalist countries, Germany in particular; note, however, that Lewin's interpretation of Lenin's goals and efforts is far from Chomsky's in the text). An excerpt (pp. 3-4):

In the eyes of its originators the October Revolution had neither meaning nor future independent of its international function as a catalyst and detonator: it was to be the first spark that would lead to the establishment of socialist regimes in countries which, unlike Russia, possessed an adequate economic infrastructure and cultural basis. Unless it fulfilled this function, the Soviet regime should not even have survived. Lenin often affirmed this belief, and he persisted in this interpretation even after several years had elapsed without bringing any confirmation of his hopes. In June 1921 he declared that the Socialist Republic might survive amid capitalist encirclement, "but not for very long, of course." In February 1922, he was just as categorical as ever: "We have always proclaimed and repeated this elementary truth of Marxism, that the victory of socialism requires the joint efforts of workers in a number of advanced countries. . . ."

According to the most widespread interpretation of Marxist theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the method of government of the first successful revolution, should be established in a country where the working class formed the majority of the population: the dictatorship of the working class would then be exercised over a negligible minority. Nothing of the kind was possible in Russia.

See also, Leon Trotsky, "War Communism, The New Economic Policy (N.E.P.) and The Course Toward the Kulak," in Irving Howe, ed., The Basic Writings of Trotsky, New York: Random House, 1963, pp. 160-167. After noting the disastrous effects of the Bolsheviks' initial programs, Trotsky wrote (p. 162):

The theoretical mistake of the ruling party remains inexplicable, however, only if you leave out of account the fact that all calculations at that time were based on the hope of an early victory of the revolution in the West. It was considered self-evident that the victorious German proletariat would supply Soviet Russia, on credit against future food and raw materials, not only with machines and articles of manufacture, but also with tens of thousands of highly skilled workers, engineers and organizers. And there is no doubt that if the proletarian revolution had triumphed in Germany . . . the economic development of the Soviet Union as well as of Germany would have advanced with such gigantic strides that the fate of Europe and the world today would have been incomparably more auspicious.

3. For Lenin's and Trotsky's thoughts on how Russia should be developed, see for example, Vladimir Lenin, "The Immediate Tasks of the Proletariat Government" (originally published April 28, 1918), in Vladimir Lenin, Selected Works, Moscow: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1935, Vol. VII, pp. 313-350. An excerpt (pp. 342-344; emphasis in original):

But be that as it may, unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of labour processes that are based on large-scale machine industry. . . . The revolution has only just broken the oldest, most durable and heaviest fetters to which the masses were compelled to submit. That was yesterday. But today the same revolution demands, in the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process. . . . And our task, the task of the Communist Party, which is the class conscious expression of the strivings of the exploited for emancipation, is to appreciate this change, to understand that it is necessary, to take the lead of the exhausted masses who are wearily seeking a way out and lead them along the true path, along the path of labour discipline, along the path of co-ordinating the task of holding meetings and discussing the conditions of labour with the task of unquestioningly obeying the will of the Soviet leader, of the dictator, during work time.

For a discussion by Trotsky of the need for "militarization of labor" and "labor armies," see Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky, London: New Park, 1975 (original 1920), ch. VII.

For Lenin's pronouncements on the need for "state capitalism," see for example, Vladimir Lenin, "'Left Wing' Childishness and Petty-Bourgeois Mentality" (originally published May 5, 1918), in Vladimir Lenin, Selected Works, Moscow: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1935, Vol. VII, pp. 351-378. An excerpt (pp. 365-366; emphasis in original):

While the revolution in Germany is slow in "coming forth," our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to do this even more thoroughly than Peter [the Great] hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and he did not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting against barbarism.

Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth, and Dissolution, Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon, 1978, p. 484 (Lenin remarked in October 1921: "aided by the enthusiasm engendered by the great revolution, and on the basis of personal interest, personal incentive and business principles, we must first set to work in this small-peasant country to build solid gangways to socialism by way of state capitalism").

On the incipient socialist structures in Russia and the Bolsheviks' dismantling of them as they consolidated control, see for example, Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, 1917 to 1921: the State and Counter-Revolution, London: Solidarity, 1970, especially pp. 1-49. This study gives a detailed chronology of the development of popular structures in Russia after the initial February 1917 revolution, then describes the Bolsheviks' rapid steps to undermine and destroy them after they gained political power in October 1917 (citing extensively to contemporaneous Bolshevik Party sources). The detail and quantity of evidence in this short book defy quotation here; however, the author summarizes some of his findings as follows (pp. ix-x):

Between March and October the Bolsheviks supported the growth of the Factory Committees, only to turn viciously against them in the last few weeks of 1917, seeking to incorporate them into the new union structure, the better to emasculate them. This process . . . was to play an important role in preventing the rapidly growing challenge to capitalist relations of production from coming to a head. Instead the Bolsheviks canalised the energies released between March and October into a successful onslaught against the political power of the bourgeoisie (and against the property relations on which that power was based).

At this level the revolution was "successful." But the Bolsheviks were also "successful" in restoring "law and order" in industry -- a law and order that reconsolidated the authoritarian relations in production, which for a brief period had been seriously shaken.

Importantly, the author notes that (p. 35):

It is above all essential to stress that the Bolshevik policy in relation to the [Factory] Committees and to the unions which we have documented in some detail was being put forward twelve months before the murder of Karl Liebknecht and of Rosa Luxemburg [in January 1919] -- i.e. before the irrevocable failure of the German revolution, an event usually taken as "justifying" many of the measures taken by the Russian rulers.

Similarly, many of the Bolsheviks' measures to disempower the incipient socialist structures and avert genuine workers' control; to suppress and liquidate left-libertarian political parties and publications; and to reintroduce wages and otherwise begin the "restoration of capitalist management of industry" were implemented well before the beginning of large-scale civil war and the Western powers' intervention in Russia on May 15, 1918 (pp. 15-46). In this context, note the timing of Lenin's pronouncements, quoted above in this footnote, concerning the necessity for "unquestioning submission" to the Bolshevik Party and its "dictatorial methods." Brinton adds that the Civil War, which peaked in August 1918, then "immensely accelerated the process of economic centralisation" (p. 46).

Furthermore, it bears emphasis that the theoretical foundations which motivated the Bolsheviks' actions once they gained power also long predated these dire conditions. See for example, Vladimir Lenin, "What Is To Be Done?," in V.I. Lenin: Collected Works, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961 (original 1901-1902), Vol. 5. An excerpt (pp. 384-385):

Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement, the only choice is -- either bourgeois or socialist ideology. . . . There is much talk of spontaneity. But the spontaneous development of the working-class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology . . .; for the spontaneous working-class movement is trade-unionism . . . and trade-unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy.

Brinton adds (p. 12): "Nowhere in Lenin's writings is workers' control ever equated with fundamental decision-taking (i.e. with the initiation of decisions) relating to production." He also quotes Lenin's view in his most libertarian work, State and Revolution, that (p. 24): "We want the socialist revolution with human nature as it is now, with human nature that cannot dispense with subordination, control and managers" (emphasis added).

For a description of the origins and development of workers' organizations in Russia before the Bolshevik takeover, discussing the period between 1905 and October 1917, see Peter Rachleff, "Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution," Radical America, Vol. 8, No. 6, November-December 1974, pp. 78-114. An excerpt (pp. 84-87, 89-90):

Beginning October 10 [1905], factories in St. Petersburg began sending delegates to meetings of what was to become the Soviet [i.e. workers' assembly]. . . . Within three days there were 226 delegates representing 96 factories and workshops. . . . The Soviet, at first performing no other task than organizing and leading the strike, changed itself over the course of several days into a general organ of the working class in the capital. . . . Similar organizations appeared amidst strikes in all the urban areas of European Russia (and in some larger villages as well). Between forty and fifty came into existence in October. Although most functioned only for a short time, their importance should not be underestimated. This was the first experience of direct representation for most of those involved. No political party dominated the soviets. . . . The soviets were created from below by workers, peasants, and soldiers, and reflected their desires. . . . [T]he Tsar turned to full-scale repression to quell all disturbances. . . . They were militarily crushed by the end of 1905, and the Russian working class suffered a defeat that would demoralize and disorganize it for almost a decade. . . .

[In 1914 there was] a real rebirth of the Russian working-class movement. . . . May Day saw half a million people demonstrating in the streets. . . . In early July of 1914 a meeting of workers from the Putilov metal works, called to support a strike in the Baku oil fields, was brutally suppressed by the police. A general strike was the immediate response made by the St. Petersburg working class, and within four days 110,000 were out on strike. Two days later, the Bolsheviks, who had experienced a rebirth in popularity since their lowest point in late 1913, called for an end to the strike. However the striking workers, exhibiting the independence that had been their tradition, paid no attention to them. Instead, they built barricades and engaged in pitched battles with the Cossacks. . . .

The beginning of 1917 saw the armed forces seething with revolt. . . . Demonstrations, which were virtually bread riots, spread throughout [Petrograd, then the capital of Russia]. The troops who had crushed similar demonstrations in 1905 refused to put down the uprising, and many joined in. By the end of the month, after three days of spontaneous demonstrations and a general strike, Petrograd was in the hands of the working class. . . . The revolution spread throughout Russia. Peasants seized the land; discipline in the army collapsed; sailors seized their ships in the Kronstadt harbor on the Baltic Coast and took over that city; the soviet form of organization reappeared, first in industrial areas, then among soldiers, sailors, and peasants. A Provisional Government came to power when the Tsar abdicated. Made up of members of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy . . . they failed to come up with solutions to the problems experienced by the bulk of the population, both workers and peasants.

The article then describes the workers' organizations -- the soviets and factory councils (pp. 90, 92-96):

The soviets, which had sprung up across the country, were viewed as the legitimate government by the workers, peasants, and soldiers, who came to them with their problems. . . . [Power within the soviets] still remained in the hands of the Executive Committee[s]. This had been the case from the start, and it continued to be the case throughout the spring and summer of 1917. . . . [S]oon the [Petrograd] Soviet itself became nothing but an open forum where workers and soldiers could come together, air their views, meet others like themselves, and keep their constituencies informed about what was going on. It did offer people who had been politically voiceless a chance to speak out. But it did not represent the power of the working class. . . . No more than the Provisional Government can the soviets of 1917 be considered instruments of working-class power. Moreover, the existing trade unions also confronted the workers as a power separate from them and over them, a power which hindered them rather than helped them in their attempts to solve their pressing problems. . . .

The real activity was represented by an incredible proliferation of factory committees, organs consisting of and controlled by the workers within each factory. It was through these committees that most of the workers sought to solve their problems. Whereas the soviets were primarily concerned with political issues, e.g., the structure of the government and the question of the continuation of the war [i.e. World War I], the factory committees initially dealt solely with the problems of continuing production within their factories. . . .

Such committees appeared in every industrial center throughout European Russia. The membership of a committee always consisted solely of workers who still worked in the factory. Most important decisions would be made by a general assembly of all the workers in the factory. The committees were utilized by the workers in the early months of the revolution to present series of demands, and in some instances to begin to act to realize those demands. Paul Avrich describes the functioning of some factory committees in the first months of the uprising: "From the outset, the workers' committees did not limit their demands to higher wages and shorter hours, though these were at the top of every list; what they wanted in addition to material benefits, was a voice in management. On March 4, for example, the workers of the Skorokhod Shoe Factory in Petrograd did, to be sure, call upon their superiors to grant them an eight-hour day and a wage increase, including double pay for overtime work; but they also demanded official recognition of their factory committee and its right to control the hiring and firing of labor. In the Petrograd Radiotelegraph Factory, a workers' committee was organized expressly to 'work out rules and norms for the internal life of the factory,' while other factory committees were elected chiefly to control the activities of the directors, engineers, and foremen. Overnight, incipient forms of 'workers' control' over production and distribution appeared in the large enterprises of Petrograd."

Even before the Bolsheviks took over, they began to limit the power of these popularly-based organizations (pp. 104-108):

By October . . . councils of factory committees existed in many parts of Russia. . . . Conferences of local factory committees in Petrograd and Moscow in late September and early October reaffirmed the necessity of proceeding with their role in production -- managing the entire production process -- and in developing better methods of coordination. A short time later, the first "All-Russian Conference of Factory Committees" was convened. . . . Members of the Bolshevik Party made up 62% of the delegates and were the dominant force. By now, the Party was in firm control of the recently created Central Council of Factory Committees, and used it for its own purposes. . . . The Bolsheviks at this conference succeeded in passing a resolution creating a national organizational structure for the committees. However, this structure explicitly limited the factory committees to activity within the sphere of production, and suggested a method of struggle which embodied a rigid division of activities. . . . The non-Bolshevik delegates -- and the workers they represented -- did not reject this new plan. Few realized the necessity of directly uniting the "economic" and "political" aspects of the class struggle. The Bolsheviks, now on the verge of seizing state power, began laying the foundations for the consolidation of their control over the working class. No longer did they encourage increased activity by the factory committees. Most workers and their committees accepted this about-face, believing that the new strategy was only temporary and that once the Bolshevik Party had captured "political power" they would be given free reign in the economic sphere.

Shortly thereafter, the Bolsheviks successfully seized state power, replacing the Provisional Government with their tightly-controlled soviets. The initial effect on the workers was tremendous. They believed that this new revolution gave them the green light to expand their activities, to expropriate the remaining capitalists, and to establish strong structures of coordination. . . . Out of this burst of activity came the first attempt of the factory committees to create a national organization of their own, independent of all parties and institutions. Such an organization posed an implicit threat to the new Bolshevik State. . . . The Bolsheviks, seeking to strengthen their position, realized that they had to destroy the factory committees. They now had available to them the means to do so -- something which the Provisional Government had lacked. By controlling the soviets, the Bolsheviks controlled the troops. Their domination of the regional and national councils of the factory committees gave them the power to isolate and destroy any factory committee, e.g., by denying it raw materials. Lenin wasted little time in trying to take control of the situation. On November 3, he published his "Draft Decree on Workers' Control" in Pravda, stating that "the decisions of the elected delegates of the workers and employees are legally binding upon the owners of enterprises," but that they could be "annulled by trade unions and congresses." Moreover, "in all enterprises of state importance" all delegates elected to exercise workers' control were to be "answerable to the State for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property. . . ."

[T]he power now resting in the hands of the Bolshevik State gave it the ability to go ahead with the dismantling of the power of the factory committees. Isaac Deutscher describes how the trade unions were used to emasculate the committees before the end of the year: "The Bolsheviks now called upon the trade unions to render a special service to the nascent Soviet State and to discipline the factory committees. The unions came out against the attempt of the factory committees to form a national organization of their own. They prevented the convocation of a planned all-Russian Congress of factory committees and demanded total subordination on the part of the committees. . . . The unions now became the main channels through which the government was assuming control over industry." There were to be future rebellions against the new state, for example Kronstadt in 1921 [where anti-Bolshevik sailors were massacred by Trotsky's Red Army] and Makhno's peasant movement in the Ukraine [which governed the area along anarchist principles beginning in November 1918 and defeated an invasion by the Western powers, then was crushed by the Bolsheviks' Red Army in late 1920]. However, they were labeled "counterrevolutionary" by the Government press and viciously suppressed. The total power of the Bolshevik State over all aspects of social and economic life was now consolidated and the working class were relegated to living under the same powerless situation they had experienced prior to 1917.

See also, Voline [i.e. Vsevolod Mikhailovich Eichenbaum], The Unknown Revolution, 1917-1921, Detroit: Black & Red, 1974 (original 1947)(classic history of the popular revolution in Russia and the subsequent Bolshevik coup, detailing the Bolsheviks' systematic destruction of the popular institutions and their repression of the genuine revolutionary developments; written by a libertarian socialist participant in the events from October 1917); Robert V. Daniels, "The State and Revolution: A Case Study in the Genesis and Transformation of Communist Ideology," The American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1953, pp. 22-43 (on Lenin's "intellectual deviation" to the left during 1917; documenting in particular how Lenin's famous polemic State and Revolution "is a work conforming neither to Lenin's previous thought nor to his subsequent practice").

For criticism of the Bolsheviks' actions by left-wing critics at the time, see chapter 5 of U.P. and its footnote 21.

4. For Bakunin's predictions, see Michael Bakunin, "Critique of the Marxist Theory of the State" (1873), "Letter to La Liberté" (1872), "Critique of Economic Determinism and Historical Materialism" (1872), and "Some Preconditions for a Social Revolution" (1873), all in Sam Dolgoff, ed., Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist-Founder of World Anarchism, New York: Knopf, 1972, pp. 326f. Excerpts (pp. 329, 332, 284, 319, 337-338, 318-319, 275):

The differences between revolutionary dictatorship and statism are superficial. Fundamentally they both represent the same principle of minority rule over the majority in the name of the alleged "stupidity" of the latter and the alleged "intelligence" of the former. Therefore they are both equally reactionary since both directly and inevitably must preserve and perpetuate the political and economic privileges of the ruling minority and the political and economic subjugation of the masses of the people.

Now it is clear why the dictatorial revolutionists, who aim to overthrow the existing powers and social structures in order to erect upon their ruins their own dictatorships, never were or will be the enemies of government, but, to the contrary, always will be the most ardent promoters of the government idea. They are the enemies only of contemporary governments, because they wish to replace them. They are the enemies of the present governmental structure, because it excludes the possibility of their dictatorship. At the same time they are the most devoted friends of governmental power. For if the revolution destroyed this power by actually freeing the masses, it would deprive this pseudorevolutionary minority of any hope to harness the masses in order to make them the beneficiaries of their own government policy. . . .

[The Marxists] insist that only dictatorship (of course their own) can create freedom for the people. . . . [A]ccording to Mr. Marx, the people not only should not abolish the State, but, on the contrary, they must strengthen and enlarge it, and turn it over to the full disposition of their benefactors, guardians, and teachers -- the leaders of the Communist party, meaning Mr. Marx and his friends -- who will then liberate them in their own way. They will concentrate all administrative power in their own strong hands, because the ignorant people are in need of a strong guardianship. . . . There will be slavery within this state . . . which will be even more despotic than the former State, although it calls itself a People's State. . . . It will be the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant and elitist of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and counterfeit scientists and scholars, and the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the name of knowledge, and an immense ignorant majority. And then, woe unto the mass of ignorant ones . . .!

A strong State can have only one solid foundation: military and bureaucratic centralization. The fundamental difference between a monarchy and even the most democratic republic is that in the monarchy, the bureaucrats oppress and rob the people for the benefit of the privileged in the name of the King, and to fill their own coffers; while in the republic the people are robbed and oppressed in the same way for the benefit of the same classes, in the name of "the will of the people" (and to fill the coffers of the democratic bureaucrats). In the republic, the State, which is supposed to be the people, legally organized, stifles and will continue to stifle the real people. But the people will feel no better if the stick with which they are being beaten is labeled "the people's stick. . . ."

No state, however democratic -- not even the reddest republic -- can ever give the people what they really want, i.e., the free self-organization and administration of their own affairs from the bottom upward, without any interference or violence from above, because every state, even the pseudo-People's State concocted by Mr. Marx, is in essence only a machine ruling the masses from above, through a privileged minority of conceited intellectuals, who imagine that they know what the people need and want better than do the people themselves. . . .

The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class: a priestly class, an aristocratic class, a bourgeois class. And finally, when all the other classes have exhausted themselves, the State then becomes the patrimony of the bureaucratic class and then falls -- or, if you will, rises -- to the position of a machine. But in any case it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of the State that there should be some privileged class devoted to its preservation.

But in the People's State of Marx there will be, we are told, no privileged class at all. All will be equal, not only from the juridical and political point of view but also from the economic point of view. At least this is what is promised, though I very much doubt whether that promise could ever be kept. There will therefore no longer be any privileged class, but there will be a government and, note this well, an extremely complex government. This government will not content itself with administering and governing the masses politically, as all governments do today. It will also administer the masses economically, concentrating in the hands of the State the production and division of wealth, the cultivation of land, the establishment and development of factories, the organization and direction of commerce, and finally, the application of capital to production by the only banker -- the State. All that will demand an immense knowledge and many heads "overflowing with brains" in this government. . . .

Can one imagine anything more burlesque and at the same time more revolting? To claim that a group of individuals, even the most intelligent and best-intentioned, would be capable of becoming the mind, the soul, the directing and unifying will of the revolutionary movement and the economic organization of the proletariat of all lands -- this is such heresy against common sense and historical experience that one wonders how a man as intelligent as Mr. Marx could have conceived it!

5. For Marx's works that are mentioned in the text, see Karl Marx, "The Civil War in France" (1871)(on the Paris Commune); "On Imperialism in India" (1853)(on the British in India); Capital, Vol. I (1867)(on industrial London).

6. On the lack of discussion of socialism in Marx's work, see for example, Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, New York: Free Press, 1960, pp. 355-392 ("Two Roads from Marx"). An excerpt (pp. 368-369):

The paucity is extraordinary. In an address to the General Council of the International Workingman's Association, published as The Civil War in France, Marx said, at one point in passing, that communism would be a system under which "united cooperative societies are to regulate the national production under a common plan," but nothing more. . . . In only one other place did Marx elaborate any remarks about the future society -- the testy letter which came to be known as The Critique of the Gotha Programme. In 1875 the rival Lasallean and Eisenacher (Liebknecht, Bebel, Bernstein) factions met in Gotha to form the German Socialist Workers Party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands). As a political party, the socialists were confronted, for the first time, with the task of stating a political program on transition to socialism. Taking its cue from the [1871 Paris] Commune, the Gotha program emphasized two demands: the organization of producers' co-operatives with state aid and equality.

Marx's criticism was savage. The demand for producers' co-operatives, he said, smacked of the Catholic socialism of Buchez (the president of the Constitutional Assembly of 1848), while the demand for the "equitable distribution of the proceeds of labour" was simply a bourgeois right, since in any other society than pure communism the granting of equal shares to individuals with unequal needs would simply lead to renewed inequality. A transitional society, Marx said, could not be completely communal. In the co-operative society, based on collective ownership, "the producers do not interchange their products." There would still be need for a state machinery, since certain social needs would have to be met. The central directing agency would make deductions from the social product: for administrative costs, schools, health services, and the like. Only under communism would the State, as a government over persons, be replaced by an "administration of things. . . ." [D]espite his theoretical criticisms of the transitional program, there is little in the Critique of a concrete nature regarding the mechanics of socialist economics either in the transitional or the pure communist society.

7. On Engels's use of the term "dialectics," see for example, Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1968, p. 65 ("Much of what is known as 'Marxist materialism' was not written by Marx but by Engels, in most cases after Marx's own death. Students sometimes forget that Marx himself never used the terms 'historical materialism' or 'dialectical materialism' for his systematic approach").

8. Chomsky personally observed this at the I.B.M. Research Center in the 1960s.

On overt pressures on the schools more generally, see for example, William E. Simon [former U.S. Treasury Secretary], A Time for Truth, New York: Reader's Digest, 1978. An excerpt (pp. 231-233):

Business must cease the mindless subsidizing of colleges and universities whose departments of economics, government, politics and history are hostile to capitalism and whose faculties will not hire scholars whose views are otherwise. . . . This has nothing to do with trying to govern what any individual professor teaches, nor is it an attempt to "buy" docile professors who will teach what businessmen tell them to. That notion is as ridiculous as the idea that anti-capitalist professors are entitled to support by capitalism. No non-professional has any right to attempt to dictate what and how a teacher teaches. He can, however (and, I argue, he must), decide whether or not that teacher -- either by virtue of his competence or lack of it, or the nature of the doctrine he espouses -- is entitled to his support. There is a world of difference between attempting to govern what is taught and simply refusing to support those whose teachings are inimical to one's own philosophy. . . .

[In addition], business money must flow away from the media which serve as megaphones for anticapitalist opinion and to media which are either pro-freedom or, if not necessarily "pro-business," at least professionally capable of a fair and accurate treatment of procapitalist ideas, values and arguments. The judgment of this fairness is to be made by businessmen alone -- it is their money that they are investing.

See also, Ann Crittenden, "Simon: Preaching the Word for Olin," New York Times, July 16, 1978, section 3, p. 1. An excerpt:

William E. Simon, Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford [and President of the conservative Olin Foundation] . . . spends at least one-fourth of his time urging corporations to promote the free-market economy. . . .

"Why should businessmen be financing left-wing intellectuals and institutions which espouse the exact opposite of what they believe in?" he asks, referring to the fact that many corporations give grants to universities or institutions whose scholars may be critical of business. . . . "I even go so far as to discourage advertising in publications that are unfriendly to business," Mr. Simon says.

On universities' dependence on corporate money in general, see for example, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992, ch. 7. An excerpt (pp. 193-194):

[B]y 1951 half of the country's nine-hundred privately endowed schools were in the red. In the late forties, private colleges and universities began soliciting corporate America to bail them out of their chronic financial predicament. A powerful segment of the business community proposed a "marriage of business and education" based on the financial rescue of independent education. In 1952, a group of leading industrialists that included Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors, Frank W. Abrams of Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, Henry Ford II of Ford Motor Company, John L. McCaffrey of International Harvester Company, Irving S. Olds of United States Steel Corporation, Henning W. Prentis of Armstrong Cork Company, and Laird Bell of Weyerhauser Timber formed the Council for Financial Aid to Education. With the assistance of the Council, corporate contributions grew dramatically in the fifties. . . . Business gifts, independent of grants for industrial research, rose from $24 million in 1948 to $136 million in 1958. By 1965 corporate donations had reached $280 million a year.

Joel H. Spring, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State, Boston: Beacon, 1972; David F. Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism, New York: Knopf, 1977, especially chs. 7, 8 and 9; Calvin Sims, "Business-Campus Ventures Grow," New York Times, December 14, 1987, p. D1. And see footnote 31 of this chapter; and footnote 75 of chapter 10 of U.P.

9. Allan Bloom's book is: The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

10. Bloom continually invokes Plato, stating: "Men may live more truly and fully in reading Plato and Shakespeare than at any other time" (p. 380).

11. On human rights in Mexico, see for example, Larry Rohter, "Former Mexican Soldier Describes Executions of Political Prisoners," New York Times, February 19, 1989, p. A1 ("In the first public acknowledgment of death squad activity in Mexico, a former Mexican Army soldier is maintaining that he was part of a secret military unit that executed at least 60 political prisoners here"); Amnesty International, Mexico: Torture With Impunity, New York: Amnesty International, 1991; Ellen L. Lutz, Unceasing Abuses: Human Rights in Mexico One Year After the Introduction of Reform, New York: Americas Watch, 1991; Dan La Botz, Mask of Democracy: Labor Suppression in Mexico Today, Boston: South End, 1992, pp. 30-33. See also footnote 88 of chapter 10 of U.P.

12. On Japan's global lead in advanced manufacturing and the myth of "Japanese economic decline" in the 1990s, see for example, Eamonn Fingleton, "The forgotten merits of manufacturing," Challenge, Volume 43, Issue 2, March 1, 2000, pp. 67-85.

13. On the similar allocation of research funding by M.I.T.I. and for "Star Wars," see footnote 4 of chapter 3 of U.P.

14. Another example of a central question systematically evaded in academic scholarship is the influence of corporations in setting foreign policy. For a rare discussion of this phenomenon, see Dennis M. Ray, "Corporations and American Foreign Relations," in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 1972, pp. 80-92. This article begins (pp. 80-81):

[W]e know virtually nothing about the role of corporations in American foreign relations. . . . [Scholarship has] clarified the influence of Congress, the press, scientists, and non-profit organizations, such as RAND, on the foreign policy process. The influence of corporations on the foreign policy process, however, remains clouded in mystery.

My search through the respectable literature on international relations and U.S. foreign policy shows that less than 5 percent of some two hundred books granted even passing attention to the role of corporations in American foreign relations. From this literature, one might gather that American foreign policy is formulated in a social vacuum, where national interests are protected from external threats by the elaborate machinery of governmental policymaking. There is virtually no acknowledgment in standard works within the field of international relations and foreign policy of the existence and influence of corporations.

15. On purges of dissent at U.S. universities, see for example, Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 (on the 1950s purge); Howard Zinn, "The Politics of History in the Era of the Cold War: Repression and Resistance," in Noam Chomsky et al., The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years, New York: New Press, 1997, pp. 35-72.

16. Chomsky notes that for Cambodia scholars, the situation has changed somewhat in recent years.

17. On Thomas Ferguson's work, see footnote 94 of chapter 10 of U.P.

For an historical analog to the Ferguson story in the text, see Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators, Paterson, NJ: Pageant Books, 1959, p. 222 (noting that in 1895, in the midst of labor agitation, the National Education Association "recommended that the teacher of American history confine herself to the colonial and early national period"). See also, Ronald Radosh, "Annual-Set-to: The Bare-Knuckled Historians," Nation, February 2, 1970, p. 108 (reporting that professor Jesse Lemish was "dismissed from the University of Chicago because his 'political concerns interfered with his scholarship'"); Jesse Lemisch, On Active Service in War and Peace: Politics and Ideology in the American Historical Profession, Chicago: New Hogtown, 1975.

18. For Peters's book, see Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, New York: Harper and Row, 1984. Scarcely eight months after its publication, the book went into its seventh printing, and Joan Peters reportedly had 250 speaking engagements scheduled for the upcoming year.

19. Some of the reviewers' blurbs reprinted in the paperback edition of the Peters book include:

• "This book is a historical event in itself." (Barbara Tuchman)

• "A superlative book. . . . To understand what is happening in the Middle East, one must begin with its past, which Miss Peters traces to the present with unmatched skill." (Theodore H. White)

• "Every political issue claiming the attention of a world public has its 'experts' -- news managers, anchor men, ax grinders, and anglers. The great merit of this book is to demonstrate that, on the Palestinian issue, these experts speak from utter ignorance. Millions of people the world over, smothered by false history and propaganda, will be grateful for this clear account of the origins of the Palestinians." (Saul Bellow)

• "Joan Peters' book provides necessary demographic and historic perspectives which have been inexplicably and substantially ignored until now, but without which misconceptions and policy distortions are inevitable. The reader will be most impressed with the thoroughness and prodigious input this work entails, as I was." (Philip M. Hauser, Director Emeritus, Population Research Center, The University of Chicago; former Acting Director of U.S. Census)

• "Joan Peters strikes a heavy blow against the broad consensus about 'the Palestinians' and the assumption that Palestinian rights are at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . From Time Immemorial supplies abundant justification for reversing the moral and legal presumptions that have cast Israel in the role of defendant before the court of world opinion." (William V. O'Brien, Georgetown University)

• "The massive research Ms. Peters did . . . would have daunted Hercules. In the course of it she turned up a great deal of interesting material from Ottoman records, the reports of Western consular officers and observant travelers and other sources." (New York Times Book Review)

• "A remarkable document in itself. . . . The refugees are not the problem but the excuse." (Washington Post Book World)

• "Everything in this book reads like hard news. . . . One woman walks in and scoops them all. . . . The great service provided here by Mrs. Peters -- if only attention is paid -- is to lay a groundwork for peace by clearing away the farrago of lies." (National Review)

• "This book, if read, will change the mind of our generation. If understood, it could also affect the history of the future." (New Republic)

• "The reader comes away not only rethinking the Middle East refugee problem, but also the extent to which propaganda can be swallowed whole for lack of information." (Los Angeles Times)

• "From Time Immemorial is impressive, informative, absorbing. All those who are interested in the Arab-Israeli questions will benefit from Joan Peters's insight and analysis." (Elie Wiesel)

• "From Time Immemorial will surely change the way we think about that still fiercely contested land once called Palestine. For Joan Peters has dug beneath a half-century's accumulation of propaganda and brought into the light the historical truth about the Middle East. With a wealth of authoritative evidence, she exposes the tangle of lies and false claims by which the Arabs have tried to justify their unending violence. Everyone who hopes for peace in the Middle East between Jews and Arabs will want to read this book -- will have to read this book." (Lucy Dawidowicz)

20. On professor Hauser, see footnotes 19 and 25 of this chapter.

21. For Tuchman's and others' jubilation about the Peters book, see footnotes 19 and 25 of this chapter.

22. The original article by Finkelstein appeared in In These Times, September 11, 1984. An updated version is published as chapter 2 of Norman G. Finkelstein, Image And Reality Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict, London: Verso, 1995. See also, Norman G. Finkelstein, "Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial," and Edward Said, "Conspiracy of Praise," both in Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, eds., Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, London: Verso, 1988, chs. 1 and 2.

23. After several years, Finkelstein was able to obtain work teaching classes in political theory and international relations at New York University and then at City University of New York. He published four books between 1995 and 2000 -- see Norman G. Finkelstein, Image And Reality Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict, London: Verso, 1995; Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Years, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996; Norman G. Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth, New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998; Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, London: Verso, 2000.

24. For British reviews of the Peters book, see for example, Albert Hourani [Oxford University historian], "An ancient war," Observer (London), March 3, 1985, p. 27. An excerpt:

The whole book is written like this: facts are selected or misunderstood, tortuous and flimsy arguments are expressed in violent and repetitive language. This is a ludicrous and worthless book, and the only mildly interesting question it raises is why it comes with praise from two well-known American writers.

Ian Gilmour and David Gilmour, "Pseudo-Travellers," London Review of Books, February 7, 1985, pp. 8f. An indication of this review's sustained decimation:

Peters's censorship of Zionist sources that do not suit her case is as effective as her censorship of Arab sources. In this, at least, she is impartial. . . . Peters cites the historian Makrizi to back one of her statements about mid-19th century population movement, but, since Makrizi died in 1442, he is less than authoritative on what happened in 1860. . . . Instead of bolstering Peters's case, the Hope Simpson report destroys it. Ms. Peters's treatment of the report shows that her handling of such evidence cannot be trusted even when she seems to be quoting it. . . . Part of the author's technique is at times to give a misleading "quotation" in the text and then bury the correct quotation in one of the 1,792 footnotes at the end of the book. . . . Peters thus uses the Ottoman census when it suits her and disregards it when it does not. . . . The author prefers the words that were not used to those that were. . . . Even when the author uses a more modern piece of evidence, it is distorted out of all recognition. . . . [W]hat can one say of a historian who takes a group of 37 refugees in 1967 and translates them into "the majority of the Arab refugees in 1948"? It is disappointing that after "seven years" of research, the author has not discovered facts about the Middle East conflict which have been widely known for a long time. . . .

[T]his book is not history. As a guide to what has happened in Palestine in the last hundred years Ms. Peters is about as trustworthy as her Medieval "source" Makrizi. The prominent Zionist academics thanked in the preface for their encouragement, their "data and statistics," their "checking and re-checking," seem to have some explaining to do. In accepting the claims of this strident, pretentious and preposterous book, Miss Tuchman and Mr. Bellow among others have shown a deplorable lack of judgment.

25. For the article that refers to the unpublished Porath review, see Colin Campbell, "Dispute Flares Over Book On Claims To Palestine," New York Times, November 28, 1985, p. C16. An excerpt:

The whole "Palestinian" issue, Miss Peters claims, is a "big lie" that has caused "bewildering, squeamish reactions" of "doubt and guilt" among Israel's supporters. Yehoshua Porath, an Israeli historian of the Palestinian Arabs who teaches at Hebrew University, was asked in a telephone interview from Jerusalem about the book. "I think it's a sheer forgery," he replied. "In Israel, at least, the book was almost universally dismissed as sheer rubbish except maybe as a propaganda weapon," the historian said. Mr. Porath described his politics as centrist. He has written an essay on the book for The New York Review of Books that will be published soon.

[Barbara Tuchman], in an angry letter to Sir Ian [Gilmour, who dismissed the book as fraudulent in the British press,] that was printed last month in The Nation, traced part of the hostility against the book to Britain's "growing anti-Semitism." Ms. Tuchman said later that she regarded some of the book's American critics as "committed P.L.O. supporters" who were guilty of "the worst kind" of anti-Semitism. . . . Mrs. Tuchman said she had not kept up with recent scholarship but she retained a vivid sense from research she did 30 years ago that Jewish labor had reclaimed a desolate Palestine, just as Miss Peters argued. The notion of "the Palestinians" was "a fairy tale," Mrs. Tuchman said.

Mr. Hauser, the Chicago demographer [who recommended the book's methods], recalled that Miss Peters, a family friend, had asked him to check some calculations and he had done so. He said he had "no competence" in Middle Eastern history. Saul Bellow declined to comment. Mr. Wiesel, Mr. Duke, Mr. White and several others [who all had praised the book] said they had not followed the controversy.

Norman Finkelstein notes that this article appeared in response to escalating accusations of censorship, leveled mainly by the British press. It was run by the New York Times in its Thanksgiving Day (non-) issue, on the Theater page, without even a listing in the index.

Several weeks later, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis then devoted a column to publicizing the hoax. See Anthony Lewis, "There Were No Indians," New York Times, January 13, 1986, p. A15.

26. For Porath's article, see Yehoshua Porath, "Mrs. Peters's Palestine," New York Review of Books, January 16, 1986, p. 36. See also, Norman G. Finkelstein, Image And Reality Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict, London: Verso, 1995, ch. 2.

27. On the Israeli reviews of the Peters book, see for example, Norman Finkelstein, "Challenging the Thesis of a Palestine 'Uninhabited' in 1880," Op-Ed, New York Times, January 17, 1986, p. A30. The Times published this letter from Finkelstein after the New York Review finally ran its review of the Peters book: