Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
" "MAN: What’s the difference between “libertarian” and “anarchist,” exactly?
There’s no difference, really. I think they’re the same thing. But you see, “libertarian” has a special meaning in the United States. The United States is off the spectrum of the main tradition in this respect: what’s called “libertarianism” here is unbridled capitalism. Now, that’s always been opposed in the European libertarian tradition, where every anarchist has been a socialist — because the point is, if you have unbridled capitalism, you have all kinds of authority: you have extreme authority.
Avram Noam Chomsky (born 7 December 1928) is an American linguist, analytical philosopher, cognitive scientist, political analyst, human rights activist and anarcho-socialist.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.
In contrast to the alternatives of “realism” and “moralism,” so defined, the revolutionary pacifism of Muste seems to me both eminently realistic and highly moral. Furthermore, even if we were to grant the claim that the United States simply acted in legitimate self-defense, subsequent events in Asia have amply, hideously, confirmed Muste’s basic premise that “the means one uses inevitably incorporate themselves into his ends and, if evil, will defeat him.” Whether Muste’s was in fact the most realistic and moral position at the time may be debated, but I think there is no doubt that its remoteness from the American consciousness was a great tragedy. The lack of a radical critique of the sort that Muste, and a few others, sought to develop was one of the factors that contributed to the atrocity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the weakness and ineffectiveness of such radical critique today will doubtless lead to new and unimaginable horrors.