Noam Chomsky describes himself as a libertarian socialist and a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism…which is nice. When I met him I wanted to get his advice on leadership and democracy. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

DANNY:
Hello, I'm Danny.

NOAM:
How you doing?

DANNY:
I know it's a bit strange but I am starting my own country and I've been doing quite well so far.

NOAM:
Do you have a place yet?

DANNY:
Yes actually, it's a very small territory but it's, you know, perfectly formed. And I've
started to get citizens and people signing up and being part of my country. So it's kind of about what kind of leader I should be to these people. I mean I don't know what your kind of thoughts are on that.

NOAM:
Well my thoughts are that if you're going to be a leader it's not going to be a decent
country, you or anyone. As soon as we have leadership structures we have subordination and obedience, a hierarchy, of course it depends what your goals are, but if the goal is to have a free, democratic, just society, then it doesn't follow leaders.

DANNY:
Right. But I thought that was part of it, isn't it, if you have, democracy then everyone has a say.

NOAM:
And they don't follow leaders. The more democratic a country is, the less it relies on
leadership. So let's take say the United States, we have a system of elections in which first there are primaries, so each State has a primary and candidates come and try to round up votes. Well here's how it works and the way it ought to work in a democracy, unlike ours. The way it works here is a candidate comes to some town, say in New Hampshire, and the Party organisers try to bring some people together and the candidate gives a talk and says, you know, here is what I stand for, vote for me. Then of course the candidate says different things in different States, they may even be contradictory because he's basically trying to round up votes. And then comes the election and the one who persuaded more people gets more votes. That's the way it's done here. But how would it work in a democracy? In a democracy the people in the town would get together through their own local organisations, political, whatever else they might be, and would come to some consensus after discussion and debate about what they think the stand
of the next national candidate ought to be. And then they'd nominate their own candidate or if some candidate running for national office wants to come he, he should come to the town and he shouldn't give a talk, he should listen.
They should tell him, look here's what we want, if you can press with these demands fine, otherwise goodbye, we'll find someone else. And furthermore if you say you will, and it turns out that you're not going to do it, we want to have the right of recall so we no longer support you and you're not our Congress member. Now that's the way it would work in a more democratic society, but that's not even contemplated here. And I think that's the question you're facing, do we want the public to be involved directly in planning, decision-making and implementation of plans, or do we want leaders to come forward who they can then follow.

DANNY:
Is there not a compromise, could I not say right, as the leader I'm going to make that
happen, and I'm going to make this the most democratic...

NOAM:
Well then you're not the leader, you're just an appointed representative who they can recall if they don't like you.

DANNY:
No-one's appointed me, that's the thing.

NOAM:
Then it's not a democratic society.
A democratic society will grow out of popular associations who select within them people who they feel they are willing to have temporarily represent them, with constant interaction and recall. Now, we're talking about kind of extremes. Any existing semi-democratic society will be somewhere between the extreme of a leadership which does what it wants and the population be damned, or one where there's really no leadership, just temporary representation of popular associations, where the real planning goes on and people are temporarily selected to take on one or another responsibility. Now that's very remote from the way what we call democracies work. In fact it's striking how remote it is. So the United States just had what's called an election in 2004. The election had two candidates, both men wanting to create wealth and political power, both went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where people are trained in the manners and style of the ruling classes and gained the right associations.And they were able to run for office because they were supported by pretty much the same concentrations of wealth and power. They had platforms, but the population didn't know what their stand was on issues. And in fact this is a very heavily polled society so we
know a lot about public opinion, the media scarcely mentioned it.
And if you look at the results you can see why. It turns out that there is a spectrum of
difference between the two Parties, but that spectrum is way to the right of the population on just about every major issue you can think of. Which means that the attitudes of the public just didn't even enter the political arena.
So the result is you have a population which is off on the side, you have an electoral
system which is basically run by major concentrations of power. The electoral campaign itself is run by the public relations industry, that is the same guys who sell you toothpaste and lifestyle drugs.

DANNY:
So it's become selling a product...

NOAM:
It's selling a product. Now you know perfectly well that when you turn on the television and you see an ad, they're not trying to give you information. If they wanted to give you information you wouldn't need all this hoopla, you know, you'd have a short statement from General Motors saying here's our models for next year and here are the characteristics in the advertising. But business doesn't spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year for that, what they spend it for is to deceive you, to project the imagery which will somehow create wants, and then convince you to buy this commodity rather than some identical one. In other words what business is trying to do is to undermine markets, they hate markets. Markets are supposed to be based on rational choices of informed consenters. But what they're hoping for is irrational choices of deluded consumers, that's what hundreds of millions of dollars a year are spent for, to project images to deceive people. Now when they're selling candidates it's the same thing, they use the same methods, they don't want you to know what the candidates and their programmes are, and people don't know. They
want to project an image which will somehow sell, period. That's very remote from democracy.

DANNY:
Mm. Although I've found that to be kind of necessary, I've found myself having to create an image for my country that people find attractive.

NOAM:
Why not tell them the truth instead of projecting an image.

DANNY:
Well it is the truth.

NOAM:
Well if it's the truth then it's not projecting an image. Now I don't know what you're
doing, but if it's projecting images in the style of commercial advertising or political
campaigns, then it's the opposite of democracy. If it's saying look, here's what I think is an interesting idea, what do you think, that's a way of contributing towards democracy.

DANNY:
This is tricky for m
e now, 'cause I thought I was en route to creating the most democratic democracy in the world, and you're slowly convincing me that I'm going the opposite way.

NOAM:
Well you know, I'm just telling you what I think.

DANNY:
Are you projecting an image or are you telling the truth.

NOAM:
Well that's for you to decide, but I'm trying to just tell the truth, I'm not projecting an
image of myself.

DANNY:
I'll tell you what I've found that the people who have joined the country, they want
leadership, they want some direction and they want some guidelines. I met with them a few days ago in a pub in London and I think that if I weren't providing the structure they'd probably still be there now.

NOAM:
Well I think it's very much like teaching. I mean it could be that students said look please tell me the truth and I'll copy it down and I'll do what you say, your task as a teacher is to tell 'em you're looking at this the wrong way, you're not supposed to come here and ask me to tell you the truth and then do what I tell you, you're supposed to come here and challenge what you hear, think about it, you know, work it out on your own, come up with new ideas, if what you're being told isn't convincing challenge it. That's what happens in a serious educational environment. They have to be encouraged to think for themselves, to listen to your ideas and to challenge them, if they don't agree with them. And your role as a so-called leader should be to eliminate yourself.

DANNY:
Should be to...?

NOAM:
Eliminate yourself, just like a good teacher essentially reduces himself or herself to a participant in the ongoing collective effort of learning something. One of the best math teachers I ever had in graduate school, a well-known algebraist, used to open the graduate class by walking into the room, writing something on the board, you know, a theorem, look at it as a kind of puzzle, and of course he knew the answers, but saying you know, could that possibly be true. And then there'd be a kind of Socratic interchange between the Professor and the class in which we'd try to figure out if it's true, and if it's not true, as sometimes he set it up to be, to find out why it isn't. And if it is true, how you might go about proving it and so on and so forth. As I say, he knew the answers already but he wanted us to discover 'em. That's good teaching.

DANNY:
So it's almost like taking people on a journey.

NOAM:
There's a famous founder of the modern university system, Guillaume von Humbolt,
German, important intellectual, he once said that you shouldn't really teach people, you should lay out a thread which they can then follow on their own and discover what it is that they ought to know, which you may not know, you may learn along the way as well. And I think that's the right attitude towards not only teaching but so-called leadership, leading. Like the goal of a leader ought to be to, basically eliminate himself.

DANNY:
Good God, it's a scary thought, 'cause I've put a lot of work into this.

NOAM:
That's okay, I mean I think you get a decent society, if in fact it doesn't rely on leaders.

NOAM:
It's not saying that it shouldn't select representatives, life's too complicated for every one of us to do everything all the time. So let's say the faculty in this department, you know, dozen people, we distribute activities, we don't all do everything. It'd just be a hopeless waste of time. But the point is it's all from below, if you don't like the way this person is doing that job, then somebody else does it.

DANNY:
Yeah, 'cause there's a lot of responsibilities when you're starting a country and, you know, there's foreign affairs, there's economics and, you know, I can't do it all.

NOAM:
You shouldn't be doing any of it, except as a representative. Let’s go back to the United States, big complicated society. These studies that I mentioned on public opinion do indicate what people want the government to do, it's rather striking that on almost every one of those issues, the government doesn't pay the slightest attention, neither political party. So take the environmental crisis, and we're kind of like racing toward the abyss, another couple of generations it may be too late to do anything about it. Well the population's aware of that, so a large majority of the population in the United States wants the US to sign the Kyoto Protocols and to go on with environmental measures. Neither political party will hear of that. The use of force in international affairs is a major issue. The overwhelming majority of the public wants the UN to take the lead, not the United States, wants the United States to join the international criminal court, to follow world court orders. In fact the majority of the population even wants to give up the veto in the Security Council and to follow international opinion on these matters.
You won't find a word about it in the press or certainly not on the political platforms, and so it goes on issue after issue. And the public has views but in a society that functions like ours, the public is expected to be marginalised. And in fact if you look at democratic theory, they very typically say that it takes a Walter Lipman, the leading public intellectual in the United States in the 20th century, a kind of a progressive liberal in the US sense, his view, very influential and quite common was that the people are what he called ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, and the responsible men, that is me and my friends, we have to be protected from the trampling and the roar of the herd so that we can make reasonable decisions which the public is too ignorant and stupid to understand. Most people who write about this favour what technically in political science is called polyarchy, not democracy. And polyarchy means a system of elite decision and occasional public gratification.

DANNY:
And I'm guessing you disagree with that.

NOAM:
I think it's outrageous, I think it's not very different from Stalinism.

DANNY:
I don't think that would be the way I would want to go.

NOAM:
Well, okay, then I think as a leader you would want to be absorbed into the community and displaced.

DANNY:
Yeah. Eventually maybe, but I've still got work to do, you know.

NOAM:
Sure, I mean...

DANNY:
'Cause it is about saying right, let's go that way, how shall we do it.

NOAM:
And here's what I think. The direction we ought to go is that you ought to take over and I'll be glad to participate, and if what I have to say is helpful, fine, like a good teacher.

DANNY:
Well maybe I could do that, I could say that this country will be fully operational the day I become not king but a citizen...

NOAM:
Ordinary citizen.

DANNY:
The day I am one of them...

NOAM:
And if you happen to dislike me or do something or other, that's fine, but then I'm subject to recall.

DANNY:
But then I still have to set up a structure don't I.

NOAM:
But freedom is something that people have to learn and internalise. It's not so simple, you know, you just take a look at real history, not just invented history. So take things that are, right in our immediate background experience, take say the role of women. And if you had asked my grandmother whether she was oppressed, she wouldn't even know what you're talking about, that's just the way life is. If you asked my mother is she oppressed, she would have recognised it and resented it, but accepted it, never thought of challenging it. Now if you ask my daughter whether she's oppressed she'd throw you out of the house. Those are changes that have to take place in psychic, in internal understanding of your own repression, and it's not easy. I mean in the case of women you know, it's thousands of years in which they simply accept being oppressed and that's the way the world is, you know, you're beaten, you're oppressed, you're ordered around, you do the dirty work and so
on and so forth. And to break out of that is not simple, and that's why the modern
Women's Movement typically begins with consciousness-raising sessions, where people talk to each other and talk out, try to see that their own circumstances are not different from those of others and that they're not laws of nature, you know, they're particular social arrangements which can be overcome. And that's true of everything, it's true of slavery, it's true of wage labour which is just a form of slavery, and is recognised as such by working people. And in fact every other kind of freedom has to be acquired and learned. I'm not making this up, there's a long literature in this as well as tons of experience. I mean Kant for example, at the time of the French Revolution, when there was a lot of outrage about the barbarism of the French Revolution, he wrote about it and said look, people have to learn how to be free, it can't be brought to them from the outside. And in the course of learning how to be free, they'll do a lot of rotten things, but that's the only way to gain the capacity for freedom, is to try it out and experience it. Freedom isn't just something that's like, maybe children have an innate sense of it, but they grow up in a society in which it's driven out of them. And it has to be recovered and comprehended, and it's done by participation, action, engagement, and so on.

DANNY:
But if my citizens all start equal, including me, except that I'm sort of running things for the moment and maybe one day I'll stop. I mean that's a good place to start isn't it? And maybe I can use the Internet for voting, or we can make all the major decisions together.

NOAM:
Remember democracy isn't just voting, it's also participation and discussion and
interchange and interaction and sharpening up your own ideas and seeing what other people think.

DANNY:
So regular meetings would be good, so they can ask questions or...

NOAM:
And discuss and come up with proposals on whatever issue it is, you know, health-care or environment, garbage collection, schools, whatever it may be, people are concerned about it and they ought to participate.

DANNY:
Well maybe I can do that, maybe I can get some kind of representatives so I can delegate some responsibility to specific departments, maybe we can all go back to that pub and sit there and get some citizens in...

NOAM:
Well what I would suggest is, instead of you delegating it, that they delegate. It should be the task of the people involved to determine what tasks have to be undertaken, and to choose among themselves the people who they are willing to give responsibility for those tasks, with a constant right of recall.

DANNY:
But technically how is that going to happen? I mean because if it, as you suggest,
happens, it should happen organically, it could go on forever, it might just never happen. Shouldn't I just say right, I'm the leader, you've got to decide this.

NOAM:
Well that guarantees that it'll never happen.

DANNY:
Really?

NOAM:
Yeah, because you're already constructing a structure which doesn't permit freedom to be exercised or even understood.

DANNY:
But what if I was saying, what problems are there and then everyone says, the problems of oppression. And I'd say well what are we going to do about it? And they'd say, we could have an oppression minister or someone to take care of that.

NOAM:
Well an oppression minister doesn't mean anything. The way you overcome oppression is by refusing to submit to it. And by constructing institutional structures in which you don't have oppression. An oppression minister is just forming a new kind of oppression.

DANNY:
But can it possibly happen?

NOAM:
It's happened all through history.

DANNY:
Has it?

NOAM:
All through history, that's why we don't have kings and princes and slaves and, you know, why wife-beating isn't accepted as an appropriate activity.

DANNY:
We've got kings...

NOAM:
Well yeah some places do, but like in England it's just symbolism. In fact, a couple of years ago there was a debate in Australia as to whether to turn the country into a real republic or to stay technically within the monarchy. And the opinion divided pretty much as you'd expect, you know, so-called Left was for a republic, so-called Right for the monarchy. But there were some exceptions, a well-known philosopher in Australia, who was very much on the Left. And he wrote an article in one of the Australian papers coming out in favour of the monarchy and the people were very surprised, you know. And then he explained, he said well it's good to have a monarchy because it gets people to ridicule power. The symbolism of the monarchy is so ludicrous and comical that it just makes people automatically contemptuous of power and regard it as a joke, which is a good thing 'cause you ought to be contemptuous of power. So it's worth keeping. His point was that, well there's one good aspect to the monarchy, namely its absurdity, and therefore it has a way of inciting contempt and ridicule for power and maybe it's not a bad thing.

DANNY:
I know one king who'd disagree with you.

NOAM:
One king?

DANNY:
One king, yeah, he'd have something to say about that.

NOAM:
Oh well, if it's a democracy nobody would care much what he says.

DANNY:
Yeah. I just decided to be one, just because I'm sorting things out, you know, I want
something for myself as well.

NOAM:
Well then I think you're starting off on the wrong foot, if you're trying to help develop a
democratic society. That's the last thing it needs.

DANNY:
You're not making this easy for me, I wish I'd met you a few months ago.

NOAM:
All I can do is apologise.

DANNY:
How about your kind of ideal society, have there been examples of that actually working?

NOAM:
Well you know it's really not the right question.

DANNY:
What would be the right one?

NOAM:
The right question is, in human history are there steps towards more egalitarian, more just, more free societies? And the answer is sure, in fact right in our own lifetimes, there's significant steps towards more free, just and egalitarian societies. I mean take, say, the rights of women again, and it's just one of many possible examples, but it's a striking example and very recent.

DANNY:
Absolutely. And you know we were talking about citizens having power, and people
creating change from the bottom up, I want every citizen to automatically become an
ambassador for the country and to have a say in the way it's run and to feel proud of it as well because they're kind of creating it alongside each other. I mean does that sound good, every citizen as an ambassador?

NOAM:
Well being technically an ambassador, like to some other country or, or just a participant?

DANNY:
Well don't come to me with problems, Chomsky, come to me with solutions.

NOAM:
No I don't have a lot of solutions.

DANNY:
I want them to get more people involved, you know, and to represent the country and to bring more citizens in so that by the end you've got this whole mass of people and I can just take my place in amongst them as you suggested.

NOAM:
That's what you ought to be working towards, I think. And then they ought to divide
themselves up in relation to their particular interests and concerns, and try to work out ideas, trade 'em with others. And then figure out ways to implement them, 'cause it's okay to have an academic seminar but we want to change the world too.

DANNY:
It's true, we do, or we're going to create the world and change it.

NOAM:
Well you can't ignore the one that exists, that's the one that has to be changed.

DANNY:
Oh that's true. To that end I had this done, I had the idea of like an ambassadors thing, and so I went to a T-shirt printing shop and I had a load of T-shirts printed up which say Ambassador, like that. People are going to have these.

NOAM:
Oh, that's nice.

DANNY:
And I've got a room full of them at home. But I'd like you to have the first one.

NOAM:
Oh okay.

DANNY:
If you'll accept it. So it's up to you, you can be Citizen Chomsky, or Ambassador Noam.

NOAM:
Okay, I'll think about it and make my choice, thanks.

DANNY:
Let me know.

NOAM:
Looks nice.

DANNY:
Well thank you for your advice.

NOAM:
It's not advice.

DANNY:
Well thank you for your...

NOAM:
Thoughts.

DANNY:
Thoughts, yeah, I mean you've confused me as much as you've helped me, I'll be honest. But I'll go away and I'll think about it and I'll try and improve the country, improve the way we're doing it.

NOAM:
Great, glad, look forward to hearing what comes up.

DANNY:
Thank you very much. Cheers, enjoy the T-shirt.

NOAM:
I sure will.

INTERVIEW ENDS