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

[Miles Jackson]

On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Mark Rupert wrote:

> 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.
>

I'm surprised Dennis R. hasn't jumped in with a Lord of the Rings
allusion: you're using the Denethor's reasoning about the Ring.
Sauron (the evil guy) makes a powerful ring, loses it (d'oh!),
the good guys find it, and Denethor argues that the good guys
should use it against Sauron.  However, all the wise good
guys (Gandalf, Galadriel, Aragorn) realize that the power of
the ring would corrupt them, and they refuse to use it.

I think this is Lourde's point (and Orwell's in Animal Farm):
power corrupts.  Not a wonderfully profound insight, but
something to keep in mind.

Miles