"Violence" as a Useless Category, was Re: Just Wars

Ian Murray seamus2001 at home.com
Mon May 14 09:27:11 PDT 2001



> Ian Murray wrote:
> >
> > Would not the society we seek prefer competence to power
> > as one of many organizing principles of civic administration
including
> > in the realm of conflict resolution? Or is there no bureaucracy in
the
> > future?
> >
>
> I presume that "competence" belongs to the realm of "fact" and
"power"
> belongs to the realm of "value." I don't see how they can be
separated.
> A bureaucracy is a machinery for the application of power of various
> sorts.
>
> _cracy_ from _krato_, strength, power. Do you mean that we can have
a
> perfectly neutral machinery of organization and then "apply" values
to
> it?
>
> This seems incoherent, and an attempt to analyze it leads to
tautology.
> Power is not power if it is not competent. Competency is not
competency
> if it lacks power. This is beginning to sound like one of the more
> arcane passages in a Platonic dialogue.
>
> Carrol
============ There are distinctions between forms of power/competences that enable human possibilities and those that oppress human possibilities, no ? Or does the very attempt to create such distinctions lead to oppression?

Ian



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