Chomsky, Noam (1928–)

Through his theory of generative grammar, in which he insists that human beings are born with an innate capacity for language, Noam Chomsky has revolutionized the field of linguistics and effectively shaped contemporary philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences. Yet, this influential intellectual—a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955; the most cited living scholar according to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, between 1980 and 1992; and the eighth most cited thinker of all times—is also a keen political activist, an outspoken critic of Western capitalism and U.S. foreign policy, and a mass media and propaganda analyst.

Born Avram Noam Chomsky in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 7, 1928, he is the eldest of [Page 322]two sons of a Russian Jewish father and a Philadelphia-born Jewish mother. Both parents taught Hebrew at the religious school of the Mikveh Israel congregation. Dr. William Chomsky, a scholar in medieval Hebrew, later joined the faculty of Gratz College, a teachers training college, and Dropsie College, a graduate school of Jewish and Semitic studies. Elsie Chomsky brought to the family a keen interest in politics and a passion for issues of social justice. All of the Chomskys, including young Noam and David, were actively involved in the retrieval of Jewish culture, the Hebrew language, and Zionism, even though Chomsky's particular form of Zionism, which stresses Arab-Jewish cooperation in a socialist framework through the organization of kibbutzim, is today considered by many to be anti-Zionist. In 1955, Chomsky and his wife Carol Schatz (with whom he grew up as a child and shared the dream of moving to Israel to settle in a kibbutz) lived in a libertarian community for about 6 weeks, where people shared in manual and intellectual labor.

Chomsky was particularly drawn to politics from a very young age. When he was 10 years old, he contributed an article for his school newspaper on the fall of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War—an event that shaped the rest of his life. Writing of the article reflected the nourishing environment of Chomsky's elementary school, Oak Lane Country Day School, which was an experimental institution inspired by John Dewey, who believed that education must provide an environment for creative and self-fulfilling exploration. Chomsky's later critique that educational institutions indoctrinate their students to conform to the values of the market culture is based on this formative experience and the shift he noticed between the intellectual freedom of his Dewey elementary school and the restraining competitiveness of traditional high school. He believed the traditional educational system in a capitalist culture teaches competition, regimentation, and prestige, while hindering creativity and cooperation.

Chomsky's interest in the Spanish Civil War also awakened his interest in theories of libertarianism, which he embraced with remarkable consistency for the rest of his life. His political option for anarchosyndicalism, or libertarian socialism, was sharpened in his youth through the works of thinkers like George Orwell and Rudolph Rocker. This anarchism is not anarchy; that is, it is not hedonistic in character but allows people to freely choose to be active and creative participants, according to their own talents, in a communal culture for the flourishing of all. It is a political model grounded in a philosophy of rationalism, where the human person is understood to be a rational being enabled by innate biological structures that promote flexibility, creativity, and mutual concern. Just as human beings have a predisposition for language—Chomsky's revolutionary claim in linguistics—they also have a predisposition for Cartesian common sense that freely chooses mutual collaboration. Accordingly, in Chomsky's view, political discourse falls into this realm of common sense, which all human beings, including children, can understand, actively participate in, and contribute to. Thus, the organization of a society should be free of any hierarchy: political, economic, or otherwise.

...