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Reddit mentions of Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky

Sentiment score: 9
Reddit mentions: 26

We found 26 Reddit mentions of Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky. Here are the top ones.

Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky
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Found 26 comments on Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky:

u/Thorium233 · 188 pointsr/politics

"Military spending doesn’t redistribute wealth, it’s not democratizing, it doesn’t create popular constituencies or encourage people to get involved in decision-making. It’s just a straight gift to the corporate manager, period."

...

"They understood that social spending could play the same stimulative role, but it is not a direct subsidy to the corporate sector, it has democratizing effects, and it is redistributive. Military spending has none of these defects."
link

u/Jugglnaught · 25 pointsr/Anarchism

Ex-army here. I did six years in the Army Reserve and a one year deployment to Iraq in 09.

The military is the most extreme example of hierarchy I can think of. There are literally dozens of layers of it, in the rank system and the chain of command, and you wear it on your chest in the form of your personal rank.

The purpose of the military is to destroy and conquer human beings, so it isn't surprising that those in the military experience what we dish out. It's why we have higher rates of suicide, mental illness, crime, etc. Everybody's experience is different of course, but I would call mine a "socially acceptable abusive relationship". Those on the top would engage in verbal abuse and physical abuse (in the form of corrective action through physical exercise, as well as sending us on pointless mission that put our lives at risk).

The military is about power, just as corporations and other big businesses are about power. Power is how you take more than you create. It's how a CEO can pay himself a million bucks a year but give his employees minimum wage. The military is how capitalists and states maintain their power at home and overseas. When foreign nations refuse to part with their natural resources or labor for a pittance, that's when those in power have to take action. I'd suggest reading Understanding Power to get the specifics here.

I could always feel there was something wrong with this system, but it took experimenting with a number of different philosophies before I came to anarchism. Abolishing all hierarchies and tools of oppressions...that's what really got me.


u/kekspernikai · 13 pointsr/TrueReddit

If you want a broad view of Chomsky, I suggest The Essential Chomsky. It's a collection of some of his most influential writings. If you want to skip the linguistic stuff and focus on political writing, Understanding Power has been suggested. I haven't read that one, though. The linguistic stuff, in my opinion, is interesting but very hard to follow if you're not into linguistics already. The opening piece from Essential Chomsky is a 50+ page essay which is a critical examination of a linguistics writing. It took a long time to read and I retained little.

Here is more info on the first book I recommended. Here is the second.

u/PeripateticPothead · 10 pointsr/philosophy

Chomsky's views on postmodernism aren't at all new. He dismisses pomo in Understanding Power (2002); I don't have my copy handy to give a page number, but I'm pretty sure it's in the index. He said things to the effect that he can hardly read pomo literature and that it's hardly amenable to serious analysis because its claims are so obscure or indeterminate. His latest remarks are a quite-consistent extension of his earlier ones.

u/aginorfled · 6 pointsr/books

I'm surprised no one's mentioned this one:

Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

It's pretty comprehensive in terms of covering the essentials of his positions on most major issues, but the editors did a fantastic job of presenting all of it as a question/answer type of format. Another cool thing, the footnotes/citations were so voluminous they made it a .pdf online because it would've probably doubled the size of the book:

The Footnotes to Understanding Power

u/tayssir · 5 pointsr/philosophy

Depends. What topic interests you, and at what level? He's written on philosophy, politics and of course lingustics.

For an overview of his political beliefs, I like Understanding Power, whose footnotes are web-only, because otherwise they would've more than doubled the book. (It's also very readable, since it's taken from question & answer sessions, where he's looser with language than in prepared talks or in print. And even Chomsky uses the book to look up stuff, praising the duo who assembled the book.)

Language and Politics is also interesting, and touches more on philosophy and lingustics.

There's much on the web. He also used to participate on ZNet's old message forums; however his years of posts (probably in the thousands) answering people's political questions may be lost.

u/Go_Todash · 5 pointsr/worldnews

Noam Chomsky has been talking about this since before most of us were even born.

u/bluecalx2 · 4 pointsr/LibertarianSocialism

The first one I read was Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, which was a great introduction. It's short and very easy to get into. You can read it in an afternoon. It's actually from a speech he gave, so you can probably find the audio online for free and listen to it instead if you prefer.

But his best book, in my opinion, is Understanding Power. It's more of a collection of essays, speeches and interviews, but it really shaped my understanding of the world better than any other book I have read. I can't recommend this book enough.

If you're more interested in libertarian socialism, in addition to Understanding Power, read Chomsky on Anarchism. He presents the theories in very clear language, instead of being overly theoretical.

If you're more interested in his writings on US foreign policy, also read either Failed States or Hegemony or Survival.

Enjoy!

u/Aurolak · 3 pointsr/samharris

>But I've not yet found a good discussion on power.

Noam Chomsky is your huckleberry if you lack the stomach for French verbosity.

Power & Ideology

Understanding Power

u/FacelessBureaucrat · 2 pointsr/PoliticalPhilosophy

Chomsky's Understanding Power is a long, organized Q&A and has sections where he discusses libertarian socialism directly, but the entire book is about the same general philosophy.

u/Fragilityx · 2 pointsr/BlackWolfFeed

Salvador Allende is a good example to see the effect America has on other countries.

Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky wonderfully links the domestic struggle with American Imperialism.

Violence by our boy Slavoj Zizek, refracts outbursts of violence into his own unique way of looking at events. Really eye opening.

America has historically exported some of the worst, murderous violence overseas for the pettiest of reasons, its own gain regardless of the consequences to liberators struggle.

I'm glad to hear of someone interested in learning, hope I've helped!

u/jackprune · 2 pointsr/chomsky

"Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky" is outstanding. It's based on speaking engagements and the the footnotes are an actual website, so they're exceptionally thorough and even include some official documents. It covers many, many topics, so best of all, you can jump around and read sections you're interested in. An Amazing book. For the table of contents check it out on Amazon, but buy the book from The New Press link given above.

u/georgewashingtonblog · 1 pointr/science

One of the main reasons for writing this essay is to point out that we must make sure that our "solutions" are not more dangerous than the problems themselves.

For example, the Washington Post noted that the government forced a switch from one type of chemical to another because it was believed the first was enlarging the ozone hole. However, according to the Post, the chemical which the government demanded be used instead is 4,470 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Currently, "government scientists are studying the feasibility of sending nearly microscopic particles of specially made glass into the Earth's upper atmosphere to try to dampen the effects of 'global warming.' " Others are currently suggesting cutting down trees and burying them. Other ways to geoengineer the planet are being proposed.

And Noam Chomsky has said that he would submit to fascism if it would help combat global warming:

"Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way understimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something.

Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we'd probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I'd even agree to it, because there's just no other alternatives right now."

(page 388).

Are those ideas any better than pouring soot on the North Pole?

Our primary responsibility must be to ensure that we are not doing more harm than good.

u/UltimatePhilosopher · 1 pointr/politics

>>So having a political leaning makes one biased as to what facts to focus on and report?

>It very well can. More importantly why suggest a left wing pundit when there's going to be hundreds of other reports on the documents from other sources that aren't biased?

I don't see an answer to my question here. That it "very well can" doesn't show that Maddow in particular is biased just because she has obvious political leanings. (It's actually the obviousness of the political leanings that would incentivize her to be as unbiased as she can - you know, for credibility's sake, which you preemptively deny to her for no good reason.) As to "why Maddow," it's because she notably spends a lot of her shows being on Mitt Romney's case, trapping him with facts and his own statements, that's why.

>And why the mention of chompskey? Do you even understand his views? He spoke out against mainstream media regularly so I don't think he would be suggesting we listen to a cable news reporter either. More importantly chompskey holds very different views from a modern liberal like Maddow. Chompskey is heavily influenced by classicaly liberal philosophy which is completely different from modern liberalism. If anything chompskey would be a sort of neo libertarian. Do you know who noam chompskey is?

First off, it's spelled Chomsky. I've read his book Understanding Power and numerous columns of his at tomdispatch.com. So yeah, I know a thing or two about the guy. Even had a short e-mail exchange with him a couple weeks back. And I know how he's influenced by classical liberal philosophy and calls himself a libertarian socialist, the socialism (and, e.g., his stated support for the OWS movement) being what places him quite prominently on today's political left. And he's very clued into factors that generate bias in the media, and he inspires his more adept readers to identify and combat any biases in their own cognitive endeavors. Which brings me to my original question which you really haven't answered.

u/Bman0921 · 1 pointr/worldpolitics

[Understanding Power] (http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Power-The-Indispensible-Chomsky/dp/1565847032#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1450851636683) USA good one. I linked to it in Amazon just so you can read the description. Just a heads up, Chomsky is widely considered to be one of the greatest modern thinkers, but because of that, he can be pretty formidable and at times difficult to follow, but if you can you will definitely be smarter because of it.

u/pseudonym1066 · 1 pointr/atheism

No, this is false. Have a read of Stephen Pinker's Better Angel's of our Nature. It shows clearly, in many graphs detailing information about many different types of violence; that all types of violence have been in steady decline over the last thousand years.

This trend of a steady decline also continues over the last 100 and last fifty years and he documents this.

Further, US military strength has been in steady decline over the same period.

Your argument is not backed by data if your argument is that greater military strength produces greater peace. The inverse is true. Also if you want some political discussion about why this is the case have a read of this book.

u/elemenohpee · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

Understanding Power is a collection of lectures and Q&A sessions, and as such it is in a conversational style that is much easier to digest than his more scholarly works. I would definitely recommend this over books like Manufacturing Consent as an introduction to Chomsky's ideas. Manufacturing Consent was made into a documentary which does a good job of outlining his critique of the mass media.

u/make_fascists_afraid · 1 pointr/SandersForPresident

No doubt about it, I'm in a niche ideology.

As far as "selling" it to the masses, that's been the focus of my thoughts for a while now. I don't feel that libertarian socialism is as radical an ideology as it might appear at first, especially in the context of the United States' political traditions.

The broad concepts aren't particularly complex, and they can be easily understood even by children. In the late 19th and early 20th century when leftist ideologies were more common, their ideas were spread through town hall assemblies, discussions in union meetings, popular songs, and, perhaps most importantly, a robust, widely-available working class press.

I don't want to harp on Chomsky too much, but the Propaganda Model presented in Manufacturing Consent goes a long way toward explaining why leftist ideologies have fallen by the wayside in the last 150 years or so. There's a great summary of this in Understanding Power, but I don't have my copy handy and google searches aren't turning anything up (as an aside, I'd highly recommend giving Understanding Power a read as it offers a great example of just how accessible and easy-to-understand anarchism can be)

So to me, it's not really a question of whether or not these ideologies are comprehensible to the average Joe. In fact, I'd argue that the current neoliberal capitalist paradigm demands much more complex and illogical reconciliations (2+2=5) from non-elite adherents.

To sum it up, in my mind there are two primary hurdles that need to be overcome in order for the idea to gain traction: (1) our perspective on private property (income-producing property; i.e. the 'means of production'--not your toothbrush), and (2) our understanding of "human nature"

Happy to go into more depth on those points, but I want to keep my comment brief(ish).

As far as coming up with a workable, realistic path, my personal opinion is that the specifics of Marxist and Syndicalist approaches to organizing are largely irrelevant in today's context (but the broad ideas are still on point).

Economically, I don't think it's realistic to expect everyone to abandon the idea of markets as a way of allocating resources, so a solid first step would be embracing a Mutualist approach that democratizes workplace control but retains a market. However, my long-term view is that markets are corrupting and should eventually be phased out.

Politically, I'm drawn to Bookchin's Libertarian Municipalism as a workable framework that doesn't require immediate and total revolution (though the expectation would be that eventually there would be a confrontation with the state)

I'm rambling at this point, so I'll shut up now. But I hope that all makes sense and answers your question(s).

u/justinmchase · 1 pointr/politics

I don't think that they are paid, this is just the way propaganda works. It's a little scary to see it first hand frankly.

You may enjoy reading a book by Noam Chomsky, it is quite eye opening:

Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky

u/tkr2099 · 1 pointr/AskReddit

Understanding Power gives a pretty broad overview of his ideas.

u/TheBerkeleyBear · -4 pointsr/IAmA

>an entire country wants to stay at war
I never said that; I was referring to the state of Israel, not the public of Israel. But thanks strawman-ing my argument, sardonically prove reductio ad absurdum, and then make fun of me. I appreciate it.

You didn't specify which point you wanted proof for, but I'll give you my favorites. Here's the evidence:
Byman-Do Targeted Killings Work?
Noam Chomsky-Sheer Criminal Aggression. with no Credible Pre-text
B'Tselem-Fatalities
Noam Chomsky-Understanding Power