Caveat: Property is a form of theft

Although I have some sympathy at the ideological level with anarchism, I probably would never be a very good anarchist, because I like rules too much. I'm perfectly happy, most of the time, to live in a semi-fascistic (pseudo-fascistic?) state, like South Korea.

My feelings about Chomsky are conflicted, at best. Most people will say that the guy is a genius in the field of linguistics, but his politics are crazy. I'm perhaps unconventional in that I would be much more likely to appreciate his contributions to politics than his work in linguistics – and I say that as someone with a graduate degree in linguistics. It's not that he hasn't brought genuine insight to linguistics, especially the realm of syntax, but I have always found him to be stunningly hypocritical in his approach to his profession vis-a-vis his approach to politics. His pronouncements and conduct as the "founding father" (those are irony quotes) of modern syntax theory and much of analystical descriptive linguistics are strikingly authoritarian and patriarchal, which is, frankly, unbecoming of a self-proclaimed anarcho-syndicalist.

Having said that, I have strong sympathies to anarcho-syndicalism. I even sometimes will list my political affiliation as "moderate anarcho-syndicalist" which is deliberately ironic – to capture that I have sympathies to it without actually practicing it (i.e. ironic as to say "moderate radical").

Why am I writing about any of this, right now? I ran across a video that was a mash-up of a Chomsky speech from the 1970s and some hip-hop. It made me think about my views of revolutionary politics and of Chomsky in particular.

Do I believe property is a form of theft? Perhaps in the strictly marxian sense, sure: as a philosophical starting point. But it's theft within the framework of a broader social contract that "allows" such theft, and I'm all about contracts and rule-of-law – even in the case of essentially "unjust" laws.

The key to reform must include not just ignoring or protesting unjust laws, which is the fairly typical anarchist-left approach (e.g. Occupy! etc.) but also working hard to create societal consensus about changing unjust laws (a good recent example of that would be the emerging, truly revolutionary, new social consensus with respect to the issue of marriage equality). Most  forms of social protest tend to stridently alienate those in opposition (cf. Tea Partiers vs Occupiers) and as such, actually work against building the kind of longer-term societal change that would be of the most benefit. That, in a nutshell, is why I'm not an Occupier despite my ideological proclivities.

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