[drunkpotato]

I haven't read Manufacturing Consent, but I did try to read Hegemony or Survival. It was an exercise in frustration and ultimately I didn't finish. Chomsky, on the rare occasions when he does back up his assertions with references, almost invariably references only himself. Combine that with a bombastic style that yet still manages to be obtuse, boring, and repetitive, and it's a recipe for a disastrous book that can convince only those who are already convinced and angry and looking for an argument from authority.

It sounds like Manufacturing Consent has an interesting thesis. I would like to read more about it but preferably from someone more readable, more scholarly, and less prone to hyperbole and unsupported claims.

[Perceval]

While I'm neither a Marxist nor a Chomskyite-anarcho-syndicalist, I have read Manufacturing Consent, and I'd say it's a pretty straight-forward application of Gramsci's theory of hegemony to the United States. Gramsci, the leader of the Italian Communist Party, wrote his theory while in jail, outlining two forms of domination: direct coercion, and rule through civil society. Hegemony is the latter—the production of seemingly spontaneous consent for the policies of the (capitalist-controlled) state. The capitalist ruling class accomplishes this through the production of an intellectual class and related institution that support and justify the current order. The public absorbs these ideas and narratives and thus consents to the exploitative capitalist order.

Chomsky just applied that idea to the United States during the Cold War (although I'm sure he would say it's still applicable). The capitalists control the corporate media, they set up foundations that fund think tanks, they lobby the government. All reporting is dependent on advertising from corporations that won't brook deviations from the current order. So an overall discourse is created in the U.S. by corporate control which makes sure the debate stays within certain bounds of dissent, but never goes so far as to be dangerous to the capitalist system.

If you don't buy Gramscianism and don't see capitalists as capable of running society's discourse in a coordinated and conspiratorial manner, you probably won't buy Manufacturing Consent's argument.

On a side note, I was reading it in a Starbucks in London in 2003 during the run-up to the Iraq War. A Canadian reporter approached me for the purpose of interviewing me about the Iraq War, simply because I was reading Chomsky. She was hoping to get an anti-war quote from an angry young Brit, but was surprised that I was American. An interesting selection bias on the part of the reporter.

[stcredzero]

I haven't read Manufacturing Consent, but I did try to read Hegemony or Survival.

Big mistake. Note the difference in publishing dates. References in Manufacturing Consent are backed up by things like "column inches per unit time in the New York Times." Also note that he is not the only author of _Manufacturing Consent_.

You remind me of an old USENET poster who used the logic: "I didn't read X by author, but I read Y, and it sucked, therefore X must suck."

Sorry, but that only has a passing resemblance to real logic.

[drunkpotato]

Only because you're using propositional logic, which also only has a passing resemblance to "real logic". Good job there.

The likelihood that a book sucks is higher given that another book by that author has sucked.

[foldr]

Ironic that none of your criticisms of the book are backed up with references.

[jbooth]

Yeah, because he's writing a comment on a message board. Read some Chomsky. He's a brilliant linguist, but his political screeds are ridiculous, he takes a set of somewhat reasonable assumptions and then builds layer upon layer on top of them as if they were bedrock or something, then winds up with a ludicrous, self-serving conclusion. (and this is coming from someone on the left side of the aisle)

[foldr]

I've read his political work, but I don't think any of what the OP said is really true. For example, the claim that Chomsky only (or mostly) cites himself is simply false. You can check this for yourself by looking at the notes for Hegemony or Survival on books.google.com:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7idg2XjTVroC&lpg=PP1&#3...

There are only a handful of references to work by Chomsky, and all are perfectly legitimate (i.e. they're not being used as a substitute for citing independent sources). The vast majority of the references are to newspaper articles and books by other authors.