Ted's Reviews > Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

This really is the indispensable Chomsky. It's a summary of his views on just about everything.

Many of Noam's views are very left wing, progressive, anti-American policy, anti-Israel policy ... so a lot of people care not much for him. He is to me the most rational, truth seeking person I've read.

The book is not "writings" of Chomsky's. Rather it is edited transcriptions of Q&A sessions from a great number of teach-ins and college talks that he has given over the years. The editing has been done to add foot-notes, and of course to make both questions and answers read better and be more succinct in their wording and give greater depth to the answers (I would guess) than was done on the fly. In that sense, they are closer to writings than most Q&A transcriptions would be.

Ch 1. Weekend Teach-In: Opening Session (primarily Rowe Mass., April 1989)
Ch 2. Teach in: Over Coffee (ditto)
Ch 3. Teach-In: Evening (ditto)
Ch 4. Colloquy (primarily Fort Collins CO, April 1990)
Ch 5. Ruling the World (discussions in NY, MA, MD, CO, IL and Ontario, 1990 and 93-96)
Ch 6. Community Activists (discussions in British Columbia, MA, IL, MD and WY, 1989 and 93-96)
Ch 7. Intellectuals and Social Change (discussions at Woods Hole and Rowe MA, 93-96)
Ch 8. Popular Struggle (discussions in MA, MD, Ontario, CA and WY, 1989, '94 & '94)
Ch 9. Movement Organizing (discussions at Woods Hole MA, 93-96)
Ch. 10. Turning Point (discussions in IL, NJ, MA, NY and MD, 94-96 & '99)

Each of these chapters is in turn divided into 10-20 subtopics (all given in the TOC)

For example, Chapter 7 has the following subtopics:
- The Leninist/Capitalist Intelligentsia
- Marxist "Theory" and Intellectual Fakery
- Ideological Control in the Sciences and Humanities
- The Function of the Schools
- Subtler Methods of Control
- Cruder Methods of Control
- Forging Working-Class Culture
- The Fraud of Modern Economics
- The Real Market
- Automation
- A Revolutionary Change in Moral Values

The footnotes are not in the book itself. They are downloadable from a web-site as a PDF document. This I have done. It is 1.7 MB, 450 pages long - the footnotes. These footnotes are not only references but additional explanatory information.

The book has a pretty good index.

The book is more wide ranging than many of Chomsky's other publications, hence is not what you want if you only want his views on Media, or U.S. Foreign Policy. But making up for this, it probably gives a pretty good sample of his views on a full range of topics.

I use the word "views" here to try to be non-argumentative. But for a vast amount of this stuff, the evidence that Chomsky present qualifies the positions he outlines not as simply his views, but as flat out the truth. But it's a truth that the average American (unlike in many cases the average European) has no idea about - because the mainstream U.S. Media just refuses to print factual news which runs contrary to the U.S. exceptionalist view which we have of ourselves - news which commonly appears in the British, French, German, even Israeli press.

Rather than try to give any sort of summary of Chomsky's insights (there, a better word than "views"), I'll just conclude by quoting a paragraph from the back cover of the book.

In a series of enlightening and wide-ranging discussions ... Chomsky radically reinterprets the events of the past three decades [the last decades of the 20th century] covering topis from foreign policy during the Vietnam War to the decline of welfare under the Clinton administration. And as he elucidates the connection between America's imperialistic foreign policy and social inequalities at home, Chomsky also discerns the necessary steps to take toward social change. With an eye to political activism and the media's role in popular struggle, as well as U.S. foreign and domestic policy, (the book) is definitive Chomsky.

That it is.