[lbo-talk] "master's tools" (was po-mo prince)

[Mark Rupert]

I too have found that quote endlessly annoying, since it implies a kind of political purism which will be hard to achieve in a contradictory world. Further (and I guess this is just another way of saying the same thing) it gives the master WAY too much credit by presuming (a) that "his" tools really are his (and not implicitly social, collective); (b) that the master's tools are so perfectly suited to the master's system of rule that they are incapable of anything that does not reproduce the master's power. There's a kind of implicit functionalism at work here.  

 
What happened to contradiction and the potential for struggle which arises out of that? How about "democracy"?  Is that just the master's tool, or is that a contradictory terrain of struggle?

 
Strikes me as hard to overstate the magnitude of this error. I've seen this quote seriously mislead some very smart people. 

 
Mark