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Chomsky and the Marlenites In 1943, Chomsky was also busy developing a whole new domain of interest. He had discovered some sectarian leftist literature of a very strange nature: the writings of the so-called Marlenites. "I got involved with Marlenite literature, partly my own reading (at the downtown Philadelphia Public Library where I would hang out when I could, a pretty impressive collection in those days), partly through Rivkin. I recall being impressed that some of their crazy predictions about the war were coming true" (13 Feb. 1996). These people claimed that World War II was "phoney" because it had been instigated by both Western capitalists and state capitalists from the Soviet Union in order to crush the European proletariat (Chomsky Reader 14). (This is not exactly the Living Marxism perspective, but there are some parallels.) The Marlenite philosophy "fit pretty well into the kinds of things I was trying to put together from other sources, probably first my newsstand operator uncle, then anarchist offices and second-hand bookstores," says Chomsky. He was introduced to the writings of George Marlen by Ellis Rivkin, a student of Solomon Zeitlin at Dropsie College who went on to become a professor of history at Gratz College (the Hebrew college in Philadelphia where Chomsky's father taught). Although he had lost contact with Rivkin by the late 1940s, Chomsky recalls that he was an "influential figure (at least for me; maybe not for anyone else)." But their contact, which had been close during Chomsky's teenage years, had ceased by the late 1940s. "Very few people knew anything about Rivkin's politics," Chomsky maintains. "He was extremely secretive, and didn't publish in these areas (except by implication, if one understood what he was hinting at). He was very knowledgeable and smart, and we spent a lot of time talking about the Bolsheviks, their background, and what they were up to ­ something that never entered his writing or general conversation" (31 Mar. 1995). The Marlenite group was very small, "probably about 3 people" who were, as the name indicates, "still `Leninist' in some sense, but highly critical of Bolshevism (including Trotsky), to the critical side of the Schachtmanites, with whom I didn't get along well because of their lingering reverence for Trotsky (which I didn't share)" (31 Mar. 1995).

Archives of the Soviet Communist Party The Spoon Collective: online philosophical discussion collective Nothingness.org: Social anarchism online

While still in his youth, then, Chomsky became committed to anarchism, and inaugurated that precocious commitment with his editorial on the fall of Barcelona. By the time he had entered his late teens, he had read widely and had ingested a voluminous amount of information about the tradition he had inherited; he had developed affinities with a variety of thinkers, groups, and movements, had studied the ideas they generated, and had begun to identify his own course of action against the backdrop of their example. Chomsky continues to work within the tradition and the milieu he embraced in the 1930s and 1940s. The long and detailed letters he writes to virtually anybody interested enough to contact him (letter writing consumes about twenty hours of his week [George ix], the close contact he maintains with grass-roots organizations, and his adherence to a gruelling conference schedule, are the outward signs of his deep sense of social and academic responsibility. He is a highly productive worker who shuns the perks of the ivory tower, perks that often seem to promote distance between intellectuals and working people. Taking pride in the products of his efforts, he tries, with each project, to improve his techniques for analysis and understanding. Although Noam Chomsky had an extremely unusual childhood, his college years, which got underway in 1945, were no less filled with ideas and ideals. Into Chomsky's life now flowed a fresh stream of intellectuals and activists, thinkers and movers.