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[...] Throughout my years in Baltimore, I always tried to maintain some relationship to local politics: we bought up an old library, and turned it into a community action centre, took part in campaigns for rent control, and generally tried to spark radical initiatives; it always seemed to me very i…

What we see there is a dramatic asymmetry in the power of the state. The nation-state remains the absolutely fundamental regulator of labour. The idea that it is dwindling or disappearing as a centre of authority in the age of globalization is a silly notion. In fact, it distracts attention from th…

I presume so. The only justification for any repressive institution is economic or cultural backwardness. In time, we should move to the gradual elimination of all repressive institutions without limit, as far as I can see. Just looking at the epoch that we are in now, it seems to me that our prese…

For instance, in your work in linguistics, you use concepts like ‘freedom’, ‘spontaneity’, creativity’, ‘innovation’ and so on. Is that connected in any way with your political views? Or is it just accidental?

A little of each. It is accidental in that the way these concepts arise in the study…

So this means taking a second alternative. We aim to try and keep control over the laboratories but to try and control also what kind of research is done in them. Of course, this is difficult, because there are limited funds for anything except military research. It brings the problem of establishi…