Raw Thought

by Aaron Swartz

The Chomsky Challenge

When I cite the work of Noam Chomsky, as I occasionally do, people often write to inform me that Chomsky is a crazed liar, a fanatic, an America-hating monster. This surprises me as I’ve read a bunch of Chomsky’s work and checked some of his most surprising claims and he invariably comes across as a very scholarly (sometimes to the point of absurdity) academic who typically presents a number of facts and then suggests some conclusions that follow from them.

Since the things I learn from Chomsky are drawn from his collection of the facts, the proper way to convince me that he’s wrong is to find a factual error in what he’s said.

I hereby offer $50 to anyone who can find an uncorrected material factual error in one of Chomsky’s published political works.

Some explanation:

If you would like to take up this challenge, you can send a comment as described below. Please include:

  1. The full text of Chomsky’s comment.
  2. The citation for its source.
  3. A substantive refutation of this claim.

Please don’t include anything additional commentary.

I will post any claims that meet these requirements on this page. After each award of the prize I will decide whether to continue the program (thus, if someone finds 1000 falsehoods, I won’t necessarily pay out $50,000).

Admitted Errors

In the first book that I wrote, American Power and the New Mandarins, in the first edition there a slight error, namely that I attributed a quote to Truman which was in fact a very close paraphrase, almost verbatim paraphrase of what he said in a secondary source. I got a note mixed up and instead of citing the secondary source I cited Truman. It was corrected within about two months, in the second printing.

(Noam Chomsky, Chronicles of Dissent (David Barsamian, int.), 350)

(I’d read this quote before I started the challenge but didn’t recall it; thanks to Oliver Kamm for the reminder.)

Concluded Errors

  1. Oliver Kamm

Dismissed Errors

  1. Brad DeLong

You should follow me on twitter here.

October 22, 2005

Comments

I’m interested (writing at the end of May 2006) if anyone’s taken you up on this offer.

posted by phil jones on May 31, 2006 #

Well, how about his claim in “What Uncle Sam Really Wants” that “free trade is fine for economics departments and newpaper editorials, but nobody in the corporate world or the government takes the doctrines seriously”?

As a reasonably senior member of the Clinton Treasury, I assure you that we took—and take—the doctrine of free trade very seriously indeed.

posted by Brad DeLong on June 1, 2006 #

“Free trade is fine for economics departments and newspaper editorials, but nobody in the corporate world or the government takes the doctrines seriously. The parts of the US economy that are able to compete internationally are primarily the state-subsidized ones: capital-intensive agriculture (agribusiness, as it’s called), high-tech industry, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, etc.”

You didn’t take free trade seriously because you handed out subsidies, undermining free trade.

posted by Joe Licentia on June 2, 2006 #

The problem with this challenge is that Chomsky’s primary technique is to not make any factual claims himself but quote authoritative sources making the claim he wants to make.

He uses this form all the time: “even xxx admits yyy” or “yyy is self-evidently true, not even xxx denies it.”

Where xxx is a person or group of people who, if anyone would deny yyy it would be them. Sometimes that group is absurdly large. Like “businessmen” or “the US government.”

The problem is he selectively quotes and misrepresents what those supposedly authoritative source are saying.

Take this example for instance: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/11044

If you don’t consider that worthy of the $50 then you probably won’t be giving away much money.

Remember that completely false lies are pointless and useless. Good, useful lies always contain a significant element of truth.

Here’s some Chomsky criticism:

Right wing: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/may03/chomsky.htm

Left Wing: http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2004/09/one_of_the_most.html

Awesome wing: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.html

posted by david mathers on June 3, 2006 #

Could someone please find errors made by Chomsky in this selection: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky

posted by nimc on June 4, 2006 #

Take your pick:

www.paulbogdanor.com/100chomskylies.pdf

Please decide yourself how many of these are real lies, multiply by $50, and send the total amount to Unicef: http://www.unicef.co.uk/press/news_detail.asp?news_id=669

posted by Arthur Pece on June 7, 2006 #

I’ve updated the elucidation of terms slightly to clarify some issues.

posted by Aaron Swartz on June 7, 2006 #

“Since the things I learn from Chomsky are drawn from his collection of the facts, the proper way to convince me that he’s wrong is to find a factual error in what he’s said.”

You don’t think it’s important to determine whether he’s providing an accurate overall picture, or if he’s cherry-picking facts and distorting quotations? It’s quite possible to engage in the latter without ever resorting to factual errors.

As Orwell wrote back in 1945: “Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning.”

One example of a “material” (i.e. relevant) fact that you may not be aware of: from what you’ve read, in Chomsky’s writings and elsewhere, how would you describe the relative strength of the Soviet and American (and later NATO) armies in Eastern and Western Europe, respectively, during the period 1946-1950?

That said:

“Chomsky’s error must be in a work that he has written and published, not some unapproved transcript.”

In that case, would “Understanding Power” qualify?

Here’s one factual statement from “Understanding Power” which is incorrect:

“—the Marshall Plan was designed largely as an export-promotion operation for American business—”

This statement is incorrect.

“You have to at least find a source that investigates the question to a greater extent than Chomsky does.”

See PPS/1 (May 23, 1947), which I’ve transcribed: http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/kennan/pps1.html

“1. The Policy Planning Staff has selected the question of aid to western Europe as the first subject of its attention. This does not mean that the Staff is unmindful of the importance or urgency of problems in other areas or of its mission to coordinate long-term policy on a global basis. It means simply that western Europe appears to be the area for which long-term planning might most advantageously begin.

“2. The Policy Planning Staff does not see communist activities as the root of the difficulties of western Europe. It believes that the present crisis results in large part from the disruptive effect of the war on the economic, political, and social structure of Europe and from a profound exhaustion of physical plant and of spiritual vigor. This situation has been aggravated and rendered far more difficult of remedy by the division of the continent into east and west. The Planning Staff recognizes that the communists are exploiting the European crisis and that further communist successes would create serious danger to American security. It considers, however, that American effort in aid to Europe should be directed not to the combatting of communism as such but to the restoration of the economic health and vigor of European society. It should aim, in other words, to combat not communism, but the economic maladjustment which makes European society vulnerable to exploitation by any and all totalitarian movements and which Russian communism is now exploiting. The Planning Staff believes that American plans should be drawn to this purpose and that this should be frankly stated to the American public.

“3. The Policy Planning Staff sees in this general question of American aid to western Europe two problems: a long-term one and a short-term one. The long-term problem is that of how the economic health of the area is to be restored and of the degree and form of American aid for such restoration. The short-term problem is to determine what effective and dramatic action should be taken in the immediate future to halt the economic disintegration of western Europe and to create confidence that the overall problem can be solved and that the United States can and will play its proper part in the solution.”

The objective of the Marshall Plan was to restore the “economic health and vigor” of Western Europe, which had been shattered by the Second World War, so as to prevent Communist expansion into Western Europe. The statement that it was “designed largely as an export-promotion operation for American business” is incorrect.

posted by Russil Wvong on June 7, 2006 #

By the way, here’s my critical review of Chomsky’s political writings: http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/chomsky.html

posted by Russil Wvong on June 7, 2006 #

On page 23 of his new book Failed states, he mentions Fallujah and says that the marines killed “hundreds” of people. The actual number is higher by American as well as Iraqi estimates:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1638829,00.html

“The US claims that 2,000 died, most of them fighters. Other sources disagree…Iraqi NGOs and medical workers estimate between 4,000 and 6,000 dead, mostly civilians…”

posted by Jonathan Shockley on June 7, 2006 #

The first part of what I want to quote is from a debate between Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz. Though it is not in book or article form, the transcript is offered on Chomsky’s own website at http://www.chomsky.info/debates/20051129.htm, and I would therefore assume that Chomsky stands by his remarks. And a debate, unlike an interview or off-the-cuff remark, would be based on prepared written material. But anyway, here is a quote from the debate from Chomsky…

“Well, as you would know if you looked at anything I’ve written, instead of…if you would know, if you look at anything that’s written I’ve been supporting a two state settlement since the early 1970’s, in print, and perhaps you can show me some of Mr. Dershowitz’s material in print supporting it. I haven’t found it. But yes, that’s my position since the early 70’s, all in print.”

Chomsky reiterates this point on a few more occasions during the debate. He also makes similar remarks regarding one-state versus two-state options in the collection of interviews “Chronicles of Dissent.” I no longer have a copy of that book, so I am unable to cite the specific source.

Now, in both “Peace in the Middle East?,” published in 1974 and “The Fateful Triangle,” published in 1983, Chomsky discusses his support for a form of “socialist bi-nationalism.” Binationalism, or the binational solution, is also often referred to as the one-state solution as opposed to the two-state solution.

So, in point of fact, Chomsky was on record in 1974 supporting a one-state solution. He has not been “supporting a two state settlement since the early 1970’s” as he claimed in his debate. So, even though this is not an article or a book, they are carefully chosen words by Chomsky and reiterated throughout the debate. I do not think they qualify as “off-the-cuff.” And since you said you would not accept “some unapproved transcript,” I can only venture to reason that you would accept an approved transcript. But since I have no idea what an approved versus unapproved transcript is, I would assume that you would accept a transcript of a debate at Harvard provided by Chomsky’s official site.

posted by John on June 8, 2006 #

I awarded $50 to Oliver Kamm and added the scholarly work constraint.

posted by Aaron Swartz on June 16, 2006 #

Russil, you’re quoting a U.S. policy planning study in order to show that the “objective” (your term) of the U.S. Marshall Plan is so and so. You seem to constrain yourself to a very narrow definition of the word “objective”, i.e. for you “objective” and “self-proclaimed objective” are the same. You could use a document from the Nazi archives in order to show that Hitler’s “objective” was to bring peace and prosperity to the world as well.

posted by nimc on June 17, 2006 #

A new “pack of lies” of Chomsky has been exposed by Michael Berube, send him his $50 http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/a_simple_request/

posted by nimc on June 23, 2006 #

In a Letter reprinted in Alexander Cockburn’s “The Golden Age Is In Us” pp149-151. Chomsky writes,

“in comparison to the conditions imposed by U.S. tyranny & violence, East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise.”

The Truth: The communists murdered 4.5-5 million people in the Ukraine, 400,000 in Poland, 360,000 in Romania, 300,000 in Belarus, 200,000 in Hungary, 100,000 in East Germany, 100,000 in Lithuania, 70,000-100,000 in Yugoslavia, 30,000-40,000 in Bulgaria, 20,000 in Czechoslavakia, and 5,000 in Albania. Other atrocities include the murder of over 500,000 POWs in Soviet captivity and the rape of at least 2 million women by the Red Army in Soviet-occupied areas of Germany.

Sources.

Alec Nove, “Victims of Stalinism: How many?” in J. Arch and Robert T. Manning, eds., “Stalinist Terror” (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p266 (Ukraine); Jan T. Gross, “Revolution From Abroad” (Princeton University Press, 2002) pp228-9 (Poland), Martyn Rady, “Romania in Turmoil” (I.B. Tauris, 1992), p31 (Romania); Washington Post, January 16, 1994 (Belarus); Karel Bartosek, “Central & Southeastern Europe,” in Stephane Courtois, ed., “The Black Book of Communism” (Harvard University Press, 1999), p395 (Hungary, Bulgaria); Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1991 (East Germany); US News & World Report, October 20, 1997 (Lithuania); New York Times, July 9, 1990 (Yugoslavia); Philadelphia Inquirer, November 3, 1999 (Czechoslovakia); New York Times, July 8, 1997 (Albania); David M. Glantz and Jonathan House, “When Titans Clashed: How The Red Army Stopped Hitler (University Press of Kansas, 1995) , p307 (POWs); Anthony Beevor, “The Fall of Berlin 1945” (Penguin, 2003), p410 (rapes).

posted by Dustin on June 23, 2006 #

Congratulations to Oliver, and kudos as well to Aaron for taking Oliver’s evidence seriously.

Responding to nimc: PPS/1 was an internal, top-secret document. Hitler’s peace propaganda was exactly that: propaganda for public consumption. If you look at the Nazi archives, while Hitler was proclaiming himself to be a man of peace in public he was secretly planning for war. (For a good narrative history, see Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”)

posted by Russil Wvong on June 27, 2006 #

Nice to hear from you, Russil, but I should correct you on one point.

Mr Swartz’s immediate reply, when faced with the evidence I presented, was to evade the issue by claiming the matter was ‘ambiguous’. Because, as you know, Chomsky’s factual errors (never mind his fabrications) are legion, Mr Swartz has been presented with a great deal of material to that effect. To get him to reply has been like pulling teeth. His response has been to try to move the the goalposts and claim he’s not bound by his clearly stated undertakings. Only when I pointed out that he could be legally challenged did he send a donation to my chosen charity. He has been consistently grudging and dishonourable - he has posted extracts from my emails without my permission, while adding interpolations that are sheer fabrication in order to obscure his gracelessness. He has now vanished completely.

No big deal, but those are the facts of the matter.

posted by Oliver Kamm on June 28, 2006 #

Nice to hear from you, Russil, but I should correct you on one point.

Mr Swartz’s immediate reply, when faced with the evidence I presented, was to evade the issue by claiming the matter was ‘ambiguous’. Because, as you know, Chomsky’s factual errors (never mind his fabrications) are legion, Mr Swartz has been presented with a great deal of material to that effect. To get him to reply has been like pulling teeth. His response has been to try to move the the goalposts and claim he’s not bound by his clearly stated undertakings. Only when I pointed out that he could be legally challenged did he send a donation to my chosen charity. He has been consistently grudging and dishonourable - he has posted extracts from my emails without my permission, while adding interpolations that are sheer fabrication in order to obscure his gracelessness. He has now vanished completely.

No big deal, but those are the facts of the matter.

posted by Oliver Kamm on June 28, 2006 #

Nice to hear from you, Russil, but I should correct you on one point.

Mr Swartz’s immediate reply, when faced with the evidence I presented, was to evade the issue by claiming the matter was ‘ambiguous’. Because, as you know, Chomsky’s factual errors (never mind his fabrications) are legion, Mr Swartz has been presented with a great deal of material to that effect. To get him to reply has been like pulling teeth. His response has been to try to move the the goalposts and claim he’s not bound by his clearly stated undertakings. Only when I pointed out that he could be legally challenged did he send a donation to my chosen charity. He has been consistently grudging and dishonourable - he has posted extracts from my emails without my permission, while adding interpolations that are sheer fabrication in order to obscure his gracelessness. He has now vanished completely.

No big deal, but those are the facts of the matter.

posted by Oliver Kamm on June 28, 2006 #

Russil, you wrote that “Hitler was proclaiming himself to be a man of peace in public he was secretly planning for war”, which leaves out the objectives of the war plan of the Nazis as they saw it, i.e. they planned nobel wars that were in their minds the way to achieve world peace and prosperity, even though the dumb public was perhaps unaware of their benign intentions, and therefore had to be deceived. If you disagree, you’re hereby challanged to produce a Nazi planning document that shows that they had malign intent in their minds, otherwise what you wrote is obviously meaningless, as it’s the same as the American PPS. If you check Chomsky’s writings, you’ll see that he quotes all sorts of other powers that seemed convinced in their benign intent, such as the Indonesian generals while they perpetrated the genocide in East Timor - these are internal documents, which make your argument is dead on arrival either way. Here’s one example online (public, not internal, but still see if you think that it’s sincere), where Chomsky quotes the emperor of Japan: “We declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan’s self-preservation and the stabilisation of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandisement.” (http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Displayarticle.asp?section=opinion&xfile=data/opinion/2005/september/opinion_september9.xml). Also BTW, “Understanding Power” is just transcribed interviews etc., if you’re looking for a book that Chomsky wrote where he discussed the Marshall Plan, then check out “World Orders, Old and New”, though maybe there’s also an earlier book about it. Oliver, what do you mean by legally challenged? If I declare that I’m giving away $50 bills for free, first come first served, and when people come to collect I tell them that I withdraw the offer and send them back home, can I be legally challenged? According to UK law? According to US law? Could you please cite which law? If not, how could Aaron be legally challenged? Thanks.

posted by nimc on June 28, 2006 #

I’m not a lawyer (and have never been a litigant, notwithstanding Mr Swartz’s false account of our correspondence), but I believe that failing to honour a published commitment would come under breach of contract.

Mr Swartz, having said he would attend to the factual errors by Chomsky that I and others have sent him, has now disappeared. This suggests at least that he understands that entering into open-ended financial pledges is unwise, and as he clearly has a commercial acumen, I hope the lesson will be valuable to him in later life.

posted by Oliver Kamm on June 29, 2006 #

Breach of contract? Don’t you have to provide your signature before you’re obligated by a contract? If I write in a high-circulation newspaper (nevermind a blog) that I consider myself obligated to give away free $50 bills, am I legally liable to do it? What if I publish that I’m selling some commodity for $50, and then change my mind and demand $60, did I break the law? What you say sounds weird…

posted by nimc on June 29, 2006 #

I’m not a lawyer, and you shouldn’t take this as any sort of legal opinion, but my understanding is that if you publish a challenge and then decline to pay up when the terms of it are met, you may be in breach of contract. This is what happened when the Holocaust-denial organisation the Institute for Historical Review offered $50,000 to anyone who could prove that Jews had been gassed at Auschwitz. A Holocaust survivor, Mel Mermelstein, provided proof and successfully sued the IHR for breach of contract when it failed to pay up.

I am of course NOT comparing Mr Swartz’s opinions to those of the IHR. I’m merely pointing out that the cases here intuitively seem to me quite similar. A challenge has been published, and the terms of it have been met at length. Only after he’d received this extensive material did Mr Swartz hurriedly add the hedges and caveats about its being up to him whether he continued with the challenge after a successful claim. That amendment wouldn’t diminish his liability, but I’ll take it as an overdue recognition that it was unwise to place such faith in Chomsky’s factual reliability.

posted by Oliver Kamm on June 30, 2006 #

I’m not a lawyer either, but it still seems to me that you have to register such a challenge in an official manner, and that just by declaring it you’re not legally liable. Otherwise, anyone could declare a challenge while walking down the street, or on the internet, or in their college/local newpaper, etc., and then a judge would have to rule on whether that declaration was serious enough?

For example, I looked for rewards offered for solving open math problems, and came up with this link (I’ll also paste a few more links that I got to by following the first link):

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/UnsolvedProblems.html http://www.claymath.org/millennium/ http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Rules_etc/ http://www.fourmilab.ch/uscode/26usc/www/t26-D-42-A-4946.html

There you see that “prize fund has been established for the solution to these problems” (which might imply what I said above about having to register it in an official manner), and that “members of these boards have the responsibility to preserve the nature, the integrity, and the spirit of this prize”, and that “no other persons or body, have the authority to authorize payment from this fund or to modify or interpret these stipulations”, so it seems that they even made sure that they wouldn’t be legally liable to anyone but themselves, i.e. even if you meet the conditions of the challenge you still depend on their good will for getting your reward.

Perhaps someone else who has more definite knowledge on what makes a challenge legally binding could answer?

posted by nimc on June 30, 2006 #

I don’t think there can be much doubt that, having published his challenge, Mr Swartz is liable. If you publish an offer or a challenge (which comes to the same thing: “do X, and I’ll give you Y”) and then try to renegotiate it because you find it too expensive, you lay yourself open to litigation in a small claims court (as this case would be). In addition Mr Swartz is not at liberty to say it was all a joke, as he has already clearly acknowledged that it was serious by giving my chosen charity the money.

The instance you cite surely confirms rather than disproves the point. It is a perfectly standard case of an organisation that issues a careful disclaimer, such as Mr Swartz did not consider when he published his challenge (and I did check carefully for the small print). Judging by his mysterious disappearance, Mr Swartz agrees with me on this.

posted by Oliver Kamm on July 3, 2006 #

I’m still unaware of any evidence that supports your claim that just by declaring a challenge one is legally liable, and I would be very happy to see a formal legal reasoning for it. What if instead of publishing it on the internet, he would have declared the challenge in a crowded street? That also counts? If not, what’s the difference? What if instead of publishing it on his own website, he would publish it on some public message board on the internet - that would count too? Unless you find the actual law that makes it a criminal offense, everything else that one declares falls under free speech (in the US, not UK).

posted by nimc on July 5, 2006 #

nimc: “[The Nazis] planned noble wars that were in their minds the way to achieve world peace and prosperity—”

Huh? The Nazis glorified militarism and war. They didn’t want “world peace and prosperity.” Where on earth are you getting this from? Again, see Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”

posted by Russil Wvong on July 5, 2006 #

Well, with the usual caveat that I have no legal comepetence or qualification, the reasoning seems to me clear enough. Mr Swartz’s challenge meets all the criteria for a legally enforceable contract. There is ‘consideration’ (he offers to pay a reward in return for something of value, i.e. the information that he requires), ‘certainty’ (he has stated clearly what it is he requires in order to pay the reward), intention (he did intend to pay up on a successful challenge, and has actually done so in one case) and acceptance (I accepted the challenge). If Mr Swartz had declared his challenge orally it might still be a legally enforceable contract in principle, but difficult to demonstrate in practice. Fortunately there are no such doubts in this case, owing to the admirable clarity with which Mr Swartz stated his challenge. By vanishing when the going got tough, Mr Swartz has indicated the seriousness with which he treats the issue, so I think we can take it he agrees with me rather than you on this.

posted by Oliver Kamm on July 6, 2006 #

Also, just to correct you on this: breach of contract in this case would of course be an issue of civil law, not criminal law.

posted by Oliver Kamm on July 6, 2006 #

Oliver, I really have no idea if you’re right or wrong, and I’m still interested to find a formal legal argument from a qualified source (perhaps also discussing differences in different countries). I presumed that in order to breach a contract, some sort of formal action has to take place prior to that, such as providing your written signature. In the example of Mel Mermelstein that you mentioned, from the little that I read now it appears that he operated through a lawyer, so I’m not sure if the challenge was just a declaration such as Aaron’s, or some formal proceedings took place there.

Russil, you’re clueless. If you set up a challenge such as Aaron’s, I’ll produce Nazi planning documents that state benign intent as I mentioned above, to prove you wrong. Alternatively, if you disagree with me saying that everything that you said so far about the American PPS is meaningless, then take up my challenge and produce a single Nazi planning document that shows that they malign intent in their minds. If you manage to find such a document, it will show that not everything that you say is wrong (as is the case now to the best of my knowledge), though your argument will still be dead wrong either way when we notice that you completely ignored the point that other powers (as well as the Nazis) proclaimed benign intent in their internal planning, such as the Indonesian generals example that I mentioned. Until you come up with something concrete, I find it a waste of time to consider what you have to say.

posted by nimc on July 6, 2006 #

If declaring a challenge orally is enough in principle, as you said, then I’m way off in my assumptions about what’s needed for a challenge to be legally binding…

posted by nimc on July 6, 2006 #

nimc: the Nazi glorification of war is well-known. A quick Google search turns up the following: http://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/resource/document/DOCNAC4.htm

I’m not going to pay you to try to back up your own argument. (By the way, Aaron doesn’t need to pay people to criticize Chomsky, lots of us do it for free. :-)

Once more: for examples of Hitler talking about peace while internal documents show he was actually planning for war, see Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”

PPS/1 doesn’t talk about objectives which are benign or altruistic, so Japanese, Indonesian, or Nazi professions of altruism (whether public or secret) are irrelevant. It talks about concrete objectives which are in the interest of the US: namely, using economic aid to strengthen Western Europe, to prevent a Soviet takeover.

posted by Russil Wvong on July 6, 2006 #

Contracts are a less restrictive notion than you’ve been assuming. They may be oral, though some oral contracts will be legally unenforceable. My guess is that Mr Swartz’s offer to his readers - to pay a reward for information - would be enforceable in law, because it meets the criteria for a contract, its terms are certain rather than ambiguous, and there’s no question but that it exists (because Mr Swartz has written it down and published it).

Incidentally, Russil Wvong is far from ‘clueless’: he does his research thoroughly. In the case you’re disputing, he is right.

posted by Oliver Kamm on July 7, 2006 #

Oliver, maybe your guess is 100% accurate, but my guess still is that by just declaring a challenge you aren’t legally liable, in the same way that when you’re offering to sell a commodity for $50 you aren’t legally liable if you change your mind and demand $60. I’m hoping to find a qualified source with a formal answer, and whether that answer is universal, or it’s different in different countries.

Russil, you’re totally ignoring the point, so I’ll repeat what I first said: “you’re quoting a U.S. policy planning study in order to show that the “objective” (your term) of the U.S. Marshall Plan is so and so. You seem to constrain yourself to a very narrow definition of the word “objective”, i.e. for you “objective” and “self-proclaimed objective” are the same. You could use a document from the Nazi archives in order to show that Hitler’s “objective” was to bring peace and prosperity to the world as well.”

Unlike your latest ignorant excuse, the original point wasn’t whether or not the goals are benign/altruistic. The point was that you accept the self-proclaimed internal PPS “objectives” as a ($50 worth) proof the those were really the objectives. By using your standards it’s also easy to prove that the Nazis’ objectives were to bring peace and prosperity to the world, that imperialist Japan planned to contribute to the development and welware of the people in the areas that it conquered, that the genocide in East Timor was carried out with the intention to help the people of East Timor in the long run, etc. BTW, to use your phrase, all of these objectives are also “in the interest” of the planners. Why wouldn’t it be in the interest of the Nazis to have peace and prosperity, achieved concretely after they take control over the world and arrange the social order in such a way that everyone knows his rightful place (as perceived by the people who have the correct ruling skills to run the show).

You also repeated again the phrase “Hitler talking about peace while internal documents show he was actually planning for war”, leaving out again the objectives of the war as seen by Hitler and the other Nazis who planned it. You’re probably unwilling to accept that they truly planned to bring peace and prosperity to the world, and thus you completely avoid discussing the point that there are internal Nazi planning documents that describe just that, because of the implications that it would have on the PPS “objectives” according to your standards.

I presume that I’ve already seen everything in your ability to say on the issue, because you keep repeating the same notions even after what you leave out has been brought to your attention. Frankly, I would much prefer to talk with someone who does his research more thoroughly than you. Responding to your meaningless claims over and over again is boring.

posted by nimc on July 10, 2006 #

You’ve got this the wrong way round. No contract is involved in advertising goods for sale. The contract is created (without signature, and - as happens if you’re shopping in a supermarket and take your goods to the checkout - witbout necessarily even words) when the buyer offers to buy certain goods and the seller accepts the offer. In Mr Swartz’s challenge there is consideration: he offers, without conditions attached, to pay a reward for something of value, i.e. the information he has asked for. That meets the criterion of a contract, and as the item of value has been provided, many times over, Mr Swartz appears to be in breach of it. I hazard a guess that this may be why he has vanished.

Instead of continually asserting your incredulity about my point (which I am not legally competent to give, but believe to be true), you might now attend to Russil’s.

posted by Oliver Kamm on July 11, 2006 #

I fail to see the difference. Let’s try to simplify it to two clear scenarios. If you declare a $50 challenge, that means that if someone meets the conditions of the challenge then he deserves to receive $50. If you declare that you’re selling a commodity for $50, e.g. by publishing an ad in a newspaper that says that people are welcomed to come to your home address to buy this commodity, and someone meets your condition, i.e. he comes and gives you $50, then can you or can’t you tell him (without breaking the law) that you changed your mind because you now think that this commodity is worth $60, and thus demand $10 extra? In the challenge scenario, you declare that if someone provides you with X (X being the correct answer to the challenge), you will give him $50. In the selling-a-commodity scenario, you declare that if someone provides you with X (X being $50), you will give him a certain commodity. So is there a legal difference between these two scenarios?

posted by nimc on July 11, 2006 #

“By using your standards it’s also easy to prove that the Nazis’ objectives were to bring peace and prosperity to the world—”

You keep saying this, but you haven’t actually provided any documentary evidence. (Statements for public consumption, like Hitler’s May 1935 “peace speech,” don’t count.)

As I understand it, our basic argument has to do with the usefulness of documentary evidence. I provided documentary evidence regarding the objectives of the Marshall Plan. You dismissed this by saying that you could use documentary evidence to prove anything, e.g. that Hitler’s objective was to bring peace and prosperity to the world.

Well, let’s take a look. What do internal Nazi documents tell us about Hitler’s objectives?

Here’s some examples from 1936, from Shirer’s book, which is based on Nazi archives. Plans to reoccupy the Rhineland:

“… as early as the previous spring (of 1935), On May 2, nineteen days before Hitler’s assurances in the Reichstag that he would respect the Locarno Pact and the treaty of Versailles, General von Blomberg had issued his first directive to the three armed services to prepare plans for the reoccupation of the demilitarized Rhineland.”

Orders to reoccupy the Rhineland:

“… Two days later (after the ratification of the Franco-Soviet Pact), on March 1 (1936), Hitler reached his decision, somewhat to the consternation of the generals, most of whom were convinced that the French would make mincemeat of the small German forces which had been gathered for the move into the Rhineland. Nevertheless, on the next day, March 2, 1936, in obedience to his master’s instructions, Blomberg issued formal orders for the occupation of the Rhineland.”

Meeting between the Italian foreign minister and Hitler:

“… On October 24, after conferences with Neurath in Berlin, Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law and Foreign Minister, made the first of many pilgrimages to Berchtesgaden. He found the German dictator in a friendly and expansive mood. Mussolini, Hitler declared, was ‘the leading statesman in the world, to whom none may even remotely compare himself.’ Together, Italy and Germany could conquer not only ‘Bolshevism’ but the West. Including England! The British, Hitler thought, might eventually seek an accommodation with a united Italy and Germany. If not, the two powers, acting together, could easily dispose of her. ‘German and Italian rearmament,’ Hitler reminded Ciano, ‘is proceeding much more rapidly than rearmament can in England … In three years Germany will be ready….’”

Speech by Goering:

“Neither Great Britain and France, their governments and their peoples, nor the majority of the German people seemed to realize as 1937 began that almost all Hitler had done in his first four years was a preparation for war. This writer can testify from personal observation that right up to September 1, 1939, the German people were convinced that Hitler would get what he wanted—and what they wanted—without recourse to war. But among the elite who were running Germany, or serving it in the key positions, there could have been no doubt what Hitler’s objective was. As the four-year ‘trial’ period of Nazi rule, as Hitler called it, approached an end, Goering, who in September 1936 had been put in charge of the Four-Year Plan, bluntly stated what was coming in a secret speech to industrialists and high officials in Berlin.

“‘The battle we are now approaching (he said) demands a colossal measure of production capacity. No limit on rearmament can be visualized. The only alternatives are victory or destruction… We live in a time when the final battle is in sight. We are already on the threshold of mobilization and we are already at war. All that is lacking is the actual shooting.’

“Goering’s warning was given on December 17, 1936. Within eleven months, as we shall shortly see, Hitler made his fateful and inalterable decision to go to war.”

To sum up, my argument is that documentary evidence is indeed useful—that if you look at the internal documents, you can get a good idea of what policymakers were thinking, and what their motives were.

And if you look at the documentary evidence for the Marshall Plan (if you don’t trust my selection, you can look at the online Foreign Relations of the United States document archive yourself), you’ll see that the policymakers’ objectives were to strengthen Western Europe and prevent a Soviet takeover, that it wasn’t “designed largely as an export-promotion operation for American business.”

Here’s the FRUS archive: http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/51684

posted by Russil Wvong on July 11, 2006 #

The fact that you fail to see the difference is not proof of your point. Let me try again.

Advertising goods for sale is not a contract. It is an ‘invitation to treat’, i.e. instead of being itself a contractual offer it is an invitation for others to make an offer on a particular item, with the vendor being at liberty to decline it (if, for example, he’s listed a mistaken selling price in his advertising).

Mr Swartz’s challenge is not an invitation to treat, but a unilateral offer of the type that lawyers know from the case of Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company (1893). Having published his offer, Mr Swartz is liable for its stated terms. His disappearance would seem to indicate that he realises this, and also - belatedly - the extreme imprudence of his original challenge.

Please now attend to Russil’s point rather than persisting with this one. What Richard Dawkins called in another context the ‘argument from personal incredulity’ is not a strong one.

posted by Oliver Kamm on July 12, 2006 #

Russil, you’re so dense, I feel like I’m talking to a wall. I’ll repeat for the 3rd and last time: war by itself isn’t an objective. I could have gotten a monkey to understand this point by now. To simplify, suppose the only people left on Planet Earth after WWII were Germans, because they killed everyone else. If that scenario fits the objectives, then mission accomplished. If the objective was war, then Hitler would now have to divide the German people to two groups, and have them fight each other, to continue having a war, and so on. So with regard to objectives, all of your quotes above amount to nothing.

As for the objectives of the Marshall Plan, your argument is so naive that it’s quite amazing. I can only assume that if you do some thorough research for a change, and check internal discussions and planning documents of Germany/Japan/USSR/Indonesia/etc., you will soon have plenty of other worthy objectives to naively believe in. Unless of course you operate under a double standard and you’re only willing to believe American internal plans, and not stuff like the USSR internal plans to prevent fascist takeover of Europe and to protect the majority from elite warmongers. The point that you are missing is that rulers always find some euphemistic terms that they convince themselves to believe in when the real objectives sound uglier than they should, so that’s what you’re seeing in the internal PPS. To quote Chomsky: “No individual gets up and says, I’m going to take this because I want it. He’d say, I’m going to take it because it really belongs to me and it would be better for everyone if I had it. It’s true of children fighting over toys. And it’s true of governments going to war. Nobody is ever involved in an aggressive war; it’s always a defensive war — on both sides.” You must be unfamiliar with Chomsky’s books, because he quotes such internal plannings in many places. BTW unlike what you implicitly and falsely attribute to me, I don’t think that internal planning documents aren’t “useful” to determine objectives. They can be useful, but if you’re interested in the real objectives of the Marshall Plan, and presumably unwilling to accept that Hitler’s real objectives were peace and prosperity, then you’ll have to triangulate different factors in addition to internal plannings, instead of just saying the objectives were so and so because that’s what in the internal planning documents. So in the case of the Marshall Plan, if you disagree with Chomsky, you can take a look at the other factors that he discusses, e.g. in his ‘World Orders’ book, and explain why they’re wrong. But just quoting the internal PPS is too naive to even be considered as an argument.

posted by nimc on July 16, 2006 #

nimc: “Russil, you’re so dense, I feel like I’m talking to a wall.”

I understand how frustrating this must be for you, and I appreciate your willingness to continue our discussion. (Aaron, if this gets tiresome, feel free to tell us to wrap it up.)

“—I don’t think that internal planning documents aren’t ‘useful’ to determine objectives.”

Good.

“They can be useful, but if you’re interested in the real objectives of the Marshall Plan … you’ll have to triangulate different factors in addition to internal plannings, instead of just saying the objectives were so and so because that’s what in the internal planning documents.”

What other evidence (“different factors”) do you have in mind, based on your reading of Chomsky’s writings, that would support Chomsky’s assertion that the Marshall Plan was “designed largely as an export-promotion operation for American business”?

Designed by whom? By US policymakers, presumably. In other words, Chomsky is asserting that US policymakers intended to promote US exports, that their publicly stated objectives were just a smokescreen. He’s making an argument about the motivations and intentions of US policymakers in formulating the Marshall Plan.

How can we determine the actual motivations and intentions of US policymakers? We can look at the internal documents. PPS/1 is just one example (although it’s a pretty important one, given the prominence of the State Department in the early postwar period). And it shows that the objectives of US policymakers in devising the Marshall Plan—as seen by George F. Kennan and the Policy Planning Staff—were to strengthen Western Europe and prevent a Soviet takeover.

If you have evidence to support Chomsky’s assertion, what is it? Or is it just that you trust Chomsky? In that case you’re assuming the point at issue—whether Chomsky is a reliable source or not. Chomsky himself says that you should look up his sources yourself, e.g. FRUS, instead of just believing what he says.

posted by Russil Wvong on July 18, 2006 #

Like the several other points that you completely ignored, I also mentioned above that I’m not going to do your thorough research for you. Normal people who read some interview and spot a line that they find interesting will look for further info (in case elaboration was beyond the scope of the interview) by the person who provided that line (and/or other sources) in his books and so forth. Other people will just believe that this line is supposed to magically self-contain itself somehow. You should decide to which of these two groups you belong, but in case it’s the 2nd group I must say that the idea that your research is thorough is quite fascinating. Maybe it would have been better for your research discipline if I hadn’t mentioned book names either.

But just as a matter of simple logic, I should point out that by pretending not to notice the main points, you’re conflating two different issues in my response: (1) that Chomsky’s description of the objectives of the Marshall Plan is accurate, and (2) that your attempt to argue against his description doesn’t ever raise to the level of sanity, because by your standards you’ll then also have to accept as real the worthy objectives of other states as they appear in their internal plannings. You could have found such internal plannings had you done a little thorough research for a change. In other words, it’s trivial to refute your argument without even looking at a single word that Chomsky wrote about the Marshall Plan. If you haven’t been able to figure that out by now, then ponder upon it for a while, or just keep living in your contradictory dream world.

posted by nimc on July 19, 2006 #

“(2) that your attempt to argue against his description doesn’t ever raise to the level of sanity, because by your standards you’ll then also have to accept as real the worthy objectives of other states as they appear in their internal plannings.”

No, I’m not conflating the two. I agree that this is the key point. As I said earlier, you’re dismissing the importance of internal documents as evidence in establishing the motives of policymakers.

My assertion is that internal documents provide strong evidence. (And in your previous comment, you said that you weren’t saying internal documents weren’t useful, which I understood to mean that you agree that they are useful.)

Your counter-argument is that other evidence has to be considered—other factors have to be triangulated, as you put it. So … what are these other factors? I’m not asking you to do “thorough research,” just to describe your own understanding based on what you’ve read.

Once you’ve put the evidence on the table, we can take a look and see how well it holds up.

posted by Russil Wvong on July 20, 2006 #

First of all, stop distorting already. I wrote explicitly “can be useful” as opposed to “are useful” - it’s simple to check it above, so there’s no point to modify the words. The other factors of the Marshall Plan were discussed by the Noam Chomsky in his books. I mentioned what normal people who are interested in the topic would do instead of just relying a single line from an interview, so take the word “normal” as a hint. It’s better if I won’t hold your hand and help you do your Marshall Plan research, because your current research discipline is somewhat lacking, to put it mildly. The aspect of this “key point” that you’re evading (and thus conflating) is a simple matter of logic and principles, and has nothing to do with evidence. I already ‘just described’ above what appears in the internal plannings of Germany/Japan/USSR/Indonesia. If you seek elaboration by reviewing the full documents, then do thorough research for a change. The simple logical question that you should answer is whether or not you’ll accept as real (or as “strong evidence” for being real, as you put it now) the worthy objectives of those states. Unless you stop evading this “key point”, and instead clearly answer this simple question (even as a hypothetical, in case you refuse to review the details), I’ll probably find it too boring to comment further.

posted by nimc on July 20, 2006 #

“The simple logical question that you should answer is whether or not you’ll accept as real (or as “strong evidence” for being real, as you put it now) the worthy objectives of those states.”

My answer is yes. Secret documents, as opposed to public statements, provide strong evidence regarding the actual objectives of policymakers: how they think, what they’re trying to achieve, how they regard their opponents, what means they’re willing to use, and so on.

But it seems to me you’re thinking of a different point: that the moral judgements made by poliycmakers regarding their own actions should not be accepted at face value. I would agree with this. Hans Morgenthau cites an example:

“To what extent the profession of universalistic principles of morality can go hand in hand with utter depravity in action is clearly demonstrated in the case of Timur, the Mongol would-be conqueror of the world, who in the fourteenth century conquered and destroyed southern Asia and Asia Minor. After having killed hundreds of thousands of people—on December 12, 1398, he massacred one hundred thousand Hindu prisoners before Delhi—for the glory of God and of Mohammadanism, he said to a representative of conquered Aleppo: ‘I am not a man of blood; and God is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity.’

“Gibbon, who reports this statement, adds: ‘During this peaceful conversation the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood, and re-echoed with the cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks of violated virgins. The rich plunder that was abandoned to his soldiers might stimulate their avarice; but their cruelty was enforced by the peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom, were curiously piled in columns and pyramids….’”

But I’m citing PPS/1 as evidence regarding the objectives of US policymakers, not their moral judgements of their own actions.

“—a simple matter of logic and principles, and has nothing to do with evidence.”

I would suggest that you really do need to look at the actual evidence—PPS/1, in this case. If you try to argue from general principles without dealing with the specifics, it’s easy to get things wrong: birds can fly, penguins are birds, therefore penguins can fly. (Or here: policymakers make noble statements to conceal their evil motives, PPS/1 is a statement by policymakers, therefore PPS/1 can be dismissed.)

posted by Russil Wvong on July 25, 2006 #

Well then, presumably we agree that the notion that the objectives of the Marshall Plan were to retore the economic health and vigor of Western Europe and to protect it from exploitation by totalitarian movements is as real as the notion that the objectives of Stalinist Russia’s intervention in Eastern Europe were to protect the majority from elite warmongers and to prevent a fascist takeover of Europe. In other words, it shouldn’t be that hard for you to track down a statement by Chomsky that disputes this characterization of the objectives of Stalinist imperialism, and thus you’ll receive $100 instead of $50 as your reward (on the assumption that Aaron agrees with your naive standards). You could also repeat this trick with other states intead of Russia, and multiply the sum of your reward. Keep in mind that the poor people in Congo indeed have a crucial need for your monetary help, so try to go over internal planning documents of as many as states as possible.

posted by nimc on July 25, 2006 #

Russil has certainly met the terms of the original challenge, but I fear he is unlikely to get the reward he was promised. Mr Swartz has belatedly realised the imprudence of the original challenge and now refuses to answer any emails on the subject. I confess I had expected the outcome, and do not hold Mr Swartz entirely culpable. Even though it was rash of him to issue a challenge on a premise (viz., Chomsky’s inerrancy) so extreme that not even Professor Chomsky himself would assert it, Mr Swartz is not the first person to have been misled by this body of pseudo-scholarship, and nor will he be the last.

posted by Oliver Kamm on July 26, 2006 #

Oliver, would you mind giving a direct (yes/no) answer to the last question that I asked you, regarding your opinion as to whether there’s a legal difference between those two specific scenarios.

posted by nimc on July 29, 2006 #

I’m sorry, I thought I’d already explained the point with directness and enormous clarity. Yes, of course there’s a legal difference. Scenario 1 (‘The Chomsky Challenge’) is a unilateral offer of the type in Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company (1893). Scenario 2 is technically what’s known as an invitation to treat.

posted by Oliver Kamm on July 29, 2006 #

“Well then, presumably we agree that the notion that the objectives of the Marshall Plan were to retore the economic health and vigor of Western Europe and to protect it from exploitation by totalitarian movements is as real as the notion that the objectives of Stalinist Russia’s intervention in Eastern Europe were to protect the majority from elite warmongers and to prevent a fascist takeover of Europe.”

I know you’re being sarcastic, but there are indeed Soviet internal documents available now, through the Cold War International History Project, and they do shed light on Soviet motives (and fear of the future revival of German and Japanese militarism was indeed a major motive). Check this out, for example: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/ACFB29.PDF

“The Allies are Pressing on you to Break your Will…”: Foreign Policy Correspondence Between Stalin and Molotov And Other Politburo Members, September 1945 - December 1946.

posted by Russil Wvong on August 4, 2006 #

You will never get an answer. And the one Kamm says he proved is also a lie and was demonstrated to be one. He purposely takes a phrase and misrepresents it to fit his iliiteracy. It’s little more than someone saying some sarcastic and a knumbskull interpreting it litterally. Kamm does this all the time. What he has going for him though is that fact that most of his readers never become familiar with Chomsky firsthand at all. Nor does he want them to. His mission is to so jade their peceptions beforehand that were they to actually pick up a Chomsky book and read it for themselves, something I have as of yet seen much of any sign that Kamm himself has, they wouldn’t know how to interpret the words correctly anyway. He’s a right-wing propagandist pure and simple. His techniques are old and standard. He’s little more than a man standing at the corner of the playground wearing a trench coat and trying to mesmerise the more gullible that he knows something. He doesn’t. Anyone having read Chomsky in any depth whatsoever can see through his lunacy immediately. Unfortunately, there are lots of folks, especially from the right who seem to have an aversion to reading much of anything which doesn’t apriori conform to the fairy tale outlook on the world. You should actually charge people for making idiotic mistakes, mis-representations, out of context statements, and flat out lies, as in the case of Kamm, Horowitz, and a few other illiterate buffoons. You’d be rich in about a minute.kb

posted by kb on December 21, 2006 #

I, for one, could perhaps consider this as a Chomsky mistake, but it should be noted that Chomsky had good reason to believe he was misquoted - Oliver Kamm took his quote out of context - a la Bill O’Reilly. Is quoting someone out of context misquoting them? I’d say ‘yes’ - but reasonable minds might differ.

And Chomsky’s perhaps-technically-incorrect statement was in a letter to the editor to Propspect magazine - a letter to the editor is not ‘a scholarly or published work’. It was a simple letter of refutation - most of which contained valid, accurate criticism - only one minor detail of which could be seen, strictly speaking, as not being 100% correct. That is, if you believe that quoting people out of context is not ‘misquoting’.

Congratulations to all involved, we may perhaps have determined either that Chomsky is not perfect, or that God is not perfect, or that Chomsky is not God.

:)

posted by Peter on May 8, 2007 #

I cordially advise the cultists that they do the object of their veneration no service at all with this sort of sophistry.

I did not take Chomsky’s remarks out of context: I carefully put them in context, showing their consistency with his published work. But even if I had quoted them out of context, that wouldn’t obviate the point that Chomsky misquoted himself. He claimed both that I had taken his words out of context and that I had misquoted them. And as I showed, Chomsky was simply wrong on this. I was quoting him accurately, in his exact words: Chomsky’s denial was a falsehood.

That falsehood was written not in a “letter to the editor”, but in a commissioned article for Prospect. That is indeed a “published work”. The author of this blog in any event introduced his stipulation only belatedly after he’d lost this monumentally misconceived challenge - and then, wisely, he vanished altogether and refused to answer any further questions on the matter. Case closed.

posted by Oliver Kamm on May 15, 2007 #

Notice how KB, the deranged Chomsky-groupie and blog stalker, only dared to appear on this thread 4 months after last comments made Russil Wvong and Oliver Kamm, for fear of being “bitch-slapped” (to use a favourite word of his) by people infinitely more knowledgable than himself. How long before Kinky Balls pastes one of his lame satires lambasting fictional “anti-Chomskyites” along with elves, hobgoblins and fairies.

posted by KB blows Noam on May 20, 2007 #

Wow - ‘cultists’, ‘veneration’, ‘sophistry’, ‘monumentally misconceived challenge’ - prone to self-important, ad hominem, high-falutin rhetoric, are we?

Christopher Hitchens uses big words, too - and he still defends war criminals George Bush and company. He can do what he wants. Me? This simple u.s. american is going to stick with the underdog every time.

http://www.chomskyviewer.org/

posted by Peter on September 21, 2007 #

I actually screwed up. I went back and re-read the post - it definitely seem like Chomsky was right, and Oliver Kamm was wrong. It’s pretty clear, too. Misquoted. Taken out of context. Etc.

And that Oliver Kamm seems like a horrible person.

posted by Peter on October 11, 2008 #

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