Rothbard's assertion aside, your quote confirms my point that Chomsky has a realistic notion of property as a zero-sum transfer of liberty from the property-abider to the property-owner, one clearly not defensible on any fruit-of-one's-labor grounds, as the resource precedes the one and thus his labor.
Here we get into the circular logic of socialists, and we drop the pretense that this is anything other than run of the mill socialism.
Chomsky attempts to hide the base nature by offering some platitudes to the concept of property, which to the socialist means personal effects, not land or buildings. The argument is something along the lines that thousands of years ago there was no title, thus ownership was established by force, therefor no one can actually own land and all must be shared in common. In practical terms, the state owns all land and the proles live at the benevolence of the rulers of the state.
Ah, but you say Chomsky rejects the totalitarian state - if so, then who do the proles rent the property they wish to live upon or build a business upon? According to Chomsky, it's "the people." But who are 'the people?" Why, none other than the rulers of the state.
Contradictions cannot exist in reality, when a socialist offers a contradiction, check the underlying premise. The circular logic of Chomsky turns full circle to the omnipresent state as owner of all things. But Chomsky benevolently says I can own my own watch, what a peach. I can't own the house I put that watch in, so I have no security in ownership, the state as owner of my house can seize it and all that is in it at a whim, so the idea that I have "property rights" even of personal property is a farce.
Capitalists haven't armed dogs to escort the disobedient to prisons? And no, Lenin didn't try social pressure, at least not the kind Chomsky referred to, as what Chomsky referred to isn't something that can be tried by a self-described state capitalist a thousand miles away from those he tries it on. Lenin tried propaganda, to be sure, but that path had already been paved by the UK and the US, and the use of informants is just standard policing. Chomsky was referring rather to the gift economies that anthropologists have proven to be our ancestry. He is well aware of the potential for social pressures to be oppressive, as is clear in his critique of the Israeli kibbutzim, but one does not escape oppression by submitting to a dictator called an owner.
Capitalism is the free exchange of goods in an uncoerced market.
Police, armed or unarmed are not necessary to the function of the market. Force is not a component of production, the way it is in socialism. Under capitalism, men work for their own profit, under socialism, men work to escape punishment. Clearly force is required in the latter situation, but not the former.
The capitalist works to earn better food, better cars, a better house, etc. The socialist works to receive less lashes, to be less likely sent to the death camps, etc.
But isn't that exactly what Chomsky is saying? Each property spook is a diminution of liberty (you're free, except don't touch that). You add all those diminutions up, and you're left, if you have no property, with an imprisonment of an even more extreme kind than that of those we call prisoners. I mean, at least a proper prisoner has enough space to fit himself, and even pace around; one without property is in every spot a trespasser.
You are free to earn and buy property which you can do as you please with. You cannot infringe on the liberty of others to control THEIR property, but you are free to use yours as you please.
Chomsky envisions no property, one is always a tenant of the unnamed master called "the people," a euphemism from time immortal for the ruling elite.
