Why Calling Chomsky 'Left' Empties the Left of Meaning
The renewed debate about whether Noam Chomsky should be called left has been reignited not by his writings but by his name appearing in recently released Jeffrey Epstein related documents. It is important to be precise here. Chomsky has not been accused of participating in Epstein’s crimes and no evidence suggests criminal complicity. What has emerged are records of meetings and correspondence after Epstein’s conviction, including Chomsky describing their interactions as intellectually useful and expressing sympathy about media treatment. For many observers this has reopened an uncomfortable question about elite insulation, moral blind spots, and selective outrage. For others it has triggered a broader reassessment of Chomsky’s political identity itself. Once again social media rushed to defend him as a left icon, without pausing to ask what left actually means beyond moral positioning.
The central problem is that left has been reduced to an attitude rather than a political practice. In online discourse left now means critical of the United States, hostile to corporations, fluent in moral condemnation, and rhetorically radical. Historically and materially the left has meant something far more concrete. It has meant the use of state power to redistribute resources, protect vulnerable populations, discipline capital, and treat welfare as a political obligation rather than charity. The left is not defined by critique alone but by the willingness to govern and to accept responsibility for outcomes.
China provides an example of left politics understood as state capacity and intervention rather than sentiment. The Chinese state retains ownership or decisive control over land and strategic sectors such as banking, energy, transport, and telecommunications. This has allowed it to direct investment toward social goals rather than short term profit. Large scale poverty alleviation campaigns were not abstract promises but tightly administered programs that linked income support, housing provision, rural employment, and infrastructure development. Officials were evaluated on delivery, not intention. Public infrastructure such as high speed rail and urban housing was built as a social integrator, connecting peripheral regions to economic centres. Education and healthcare expansion were treated as national priorities rather than market opportunities. These policies dramatically improved life expectancy, literacy, and social mobility. Whatever one thinks of China’s political freedoms, its left character lies in the state’s unapologetic assumption of responsibility for material well being.
Kerala offers a very different but equally instructive example of left governance within a democratic and federal framework. Over the last decade the Left Democratic Front government has pursued an explicitly people centred agenda that treats welfare as a right rather than a concession. Public healthcare was transformed through the Aardram mission, which upgraded primary health centres into family health centres with better staffing, longer hours, and improved diagnostics. This groundwork proved crucial during successive crises, from Nipah outbreaks to floods to the COVID pandemic, when Kerala’s public health response consistently outperformed states with higher incomes but weaker systems.
Education has been another core achievement. Government schools were revitalised through large scale infrastructure upgrades, digital classrooms, and teacher support, reversing decades of flight to private institutions. Enrollment in public schools rose significantly, signalling renewed public confidence. The state invested not only in access but in dignity, ensuring that government education was no longer a marker of deprivation but a viable and respected choice.
Housing policy under the Life Mission program addressed one of the most persistent forms of structural vulnerability. Hundreds of thousands of families were provided secure housing through a combination of state funding, local government participation, and community level planning. This was not charity driven housing but rights based provisioning, integrated into broader welfare frameworks.
Kerala’s welfare pensions were expanded and streamlined over the last decade, covering elderly people, widows, people with disabilities, and informal sector workers. Payments were modest but regular and predictable, which matters more for survival than headline figures. The Kudumbashree network of women’s self help groups continued to function as both an economic and social infrastructure, supporting livelihoods, food security, and crisis response. During floods and lockdowns these local networks often delivered relief faster than centralised agencies.
Infrastructure development in Kerala under the LDF did not follow the typical privatise first model. Through public financing mechanisms the state invested in roads, bridges, public buildings, and transit while retaining public ownership and accountability. Local self governments were empowered through participatory planning processes that allowed communities to identify priorities and allocate resources. This decentralisation was not symbolic. It shaped sanitation projects, water supply, housing, and social services at the grassroots level.
The cumulative effect of these policies has been consistent. Kerala continues to rank at the top of human development indicators despite limited fiscal autonomy and modest per capita income. Infant mortality remains low, life expectancy high, and social security broad based. These outcomes are not accidental. They are the result of deliberate political choices that place collective welfare above market logic.
Against this backdrop Noam Chomsky’s political philosophy sits uneasily with practical left governance. Chomsky is a formidable critic of imperialism, corporate power, and media manipulation. His analysis of how consent is manufactured remains essential reading. But he is also deeply suspicious of state power as such. His long standing commitment to anarchist and libertarian socialist ideas leads him to reject centralised authority even when that authority is deployed for redistribution and welfare.
This matters because every achievement in China and Kerala required precisely the kind of state capacity Chomsky is uncomfortable endorsing. Poverty eradication, public healthcare, housing guarantees, education reform, labour protection, and social security all depend on taxation, regulation, enforcement, and bureaucratic coordination. These are not optional features. They are the machinery of left politics. Without them redistribution becomes a moral aspiration rather than a material reality.
Social media insists on calling Chomsky left because it allows the left to be reduced to permanent critique. Anti imperialism becomes a substitute for governance. Moral clarity replaces institutional responsibility. The left is transformed into a posture that never has to answer for delivery failures or trade offs. In this version of politics one can condemn power endlessly without ever having to wield it.
China and Kerala expose the limits of that fantasy. Left politics is not about staying pure. It is about accepting that power is unavoidable and choosing to use it on behalf of those the market excludes. By that standard Chomsky remains an invaluable critic of power but not a practitioner of left politics. Confusing the two does not elevate the left. It empties it of consequence.
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