Excellent primer on Chomsky

Chomsky: Language, Mind And Politics

by James McGilvray

(Polity, £17.99)

After providing a brief biography, James McGilvray spends the greater part of this well-written primer discussing Chomsky's work on language, the mind and the whole nature of science.

That some of this is a little difficult would be an understatement, to say the least, but it's worth the effort if only to look at a part of Chomsky's career that all too often people pay lip service to but so very rarely explore.

Contrary to what many on the left might expect Chomsky often draws upon innate and nativistic models dating from US sociopolitical policy in the 19th century, so much so that he has more in common with the field of what we would today call biolinguistics than any other.

Later chapters deal with more familiar issues such as Chomsky's books on the consequences of US empire building. His analysis of what drives it forward and, just as importantly, how it manages to manufacture consent is second to none and McGilvray quite rightly gives credit where credit is due.

Away from foreign policy, Chomsky is far more pedestrian and McGilvray is somewhat uncritical in this respect. Although he's never claimed to have all the answers, Chomsky's anarcho-syndicalism fails to convince and has never been backed up by a personal commitment to any organisation.

McGilvray's insistence that there is a strong link between his subject's earlier "scientific" work and later more political interests, strikes me as a little forced, other than on a very general level.

Yet read in tandem with the essays of the man himself, this book is an excellent introduction.

Steve Andrew