Chomsky's Statism: An anarchism for the next millenium?

*yawn*

TL;DR Chomsky is smart enough to have internalized Brecht's lesson: "First comes a full stomach, then comes ethics."

I consider the statist way of transition to be an act of desperation and powerlessness. That's what makes it so tempting in a way... (kind of like internalizing the neoliberal "there can be no alternative" to a point where grabbing pills longing for power looks like the only way out) I can sometimes feel myself battling with it (I have major fits of DDR nostalgia from time to time, for example)

Meh.

I'll depart from my usual prohibition on class-baiting and say that anyone who seriously loses sleep at night over Chomsky's supposed "statism" has never been one dole check away from starvation.

This type of nonsense is best left to "anarcho"-capitalists.

The Infoshop article seems like yet another example of the endless need to hash out criticisms of other individual leftists. What relevance does this have theoretically or practically for anything?

Even aside from that, I see nowhere in the article any remarks of Chomsky where he talks about “statism” as the solution for the next millennium or whatever. I’m not even a big fan of Chomsky, but all he seems to be saying is something that I think is pretty uncontroversial among class struggle anarchists and the ultra-left: certain state reforms are better than none, and we should try to have at least some degree of popular participation even in a limited bourgeois state while striving to abolish it.

I think it's also ridiculous how the article says things like "besides the question of whether it is moral for people to participate [in the state]," "government is force," and "bringing pressure on an evil institution." As if any kind of understanding of what the state is would use one of the very ideologies of the state: moralism.

“As truly religious men they should scorn daily needs and cry out with voices full of faith: "May our class be crucified, may our race perish, but let the eternal principles remain immaculate!”

To be honest this has been done to death on here before.
here and here and here and here and here etc.

It's been done to death indeed, and yet I think it continues to remain not only irrelevant (who cares whether the celebrity leftists have communist politics?) but off-the-mark. Just because he happens to think there might be benefits to the Chavez government, or being against the crushing of his rule by the U.S., doesn't mean he's "Chavez's clown" (as the article in one of those links argued). His critical support for Chavez I think is reactionary, but that’s still quite different from being an uncritical supporter. And while it shows a flawed understanding of the world, I don’t think it shows evidence of him believing the bourgeois state to be an adequate solution.

And anyway, I think the most interesting thing to read of Chomsky's is his debate with Foucault, which isn't very related to this at all: http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm