[lbo-talk] Noam 1, Israelo-apartheid 0

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Tue May 18 21:03:18 PDT 2010


shag carpet bomb wrote:


> foucault says that the proletariat must take power in order to win,
> not take power in the service of a higher power, justice. chomsky
> disagrees with this,

Boy, this thread is turning me (returning me?) into much more of a Chomskyite than I thought I was....You didn't quote the part that follows, where they put aside the hypotheticals and talk concretely.

At this point, Foucault seems to talk himself into a hole:


> FOUCAULT:
> But I would merely like to reply to your first sentence, in which
> you said that if you didn't consider the war you make against the
> police to be just, you wouldn't make it.
> I would like to reply to you in terms of Spinoza and say that the
> proletariat doesn't wage war against the ruling class because it
> considers such a war to be just. The proletariat makes war with the
> ruling class because, for the first time in history, it wants to take
> power. And because it will overthrow the power of the ruling class it
> considers such a war to be just.
>
>
> CHOMSKY:
> Yeah, I don't agree.
>
>
> FOUCAULT:
> One makes war to win, not because it is just.
>
>
> CHOMSKY:
> I don't, personally, agree with that.
> For example, if I could convince myself that attainment of power by
> the proletariat would lead to a terrorist police state, in which
> freedom and dignity and decent human relations would be destroyed,
> then I wouldn't want the proletariat to take power. In fact the only
> reason for wanting any such thing, I believe, is because one thinks,
> rightly or wrongly, that some fundamental human values will be
> achieved by that transfer of power.
>
>
> FOUCAULT:
> When the proletariat takes power, it may be quite possible that the
> proletariat will exert towards the classes over which it has just
> triumphed, a violent, dictatorial and even bloody power. I can't see
> what objection one could make to this.
> But if you ask me what would be the case if the proletariat exerted
> bloody, tyrannical and unjust power towards itself, then I would say
> that this could only occur if the proletariat hadn't really taken
> power, but that a class outside the proletariat, a group of people
> inside the proletariat, a bureaucracy or petit bourgeois elements had
> taken power.
>
>
> CHOMSKY:
> Well, I'm not at all satisfied with that theory of revolution for a
> lot of reasons, historical and others. But even if one were to accept
> it for the sake of argument, still that theory maintains that it is
> proper for the proletariat to take power and exercise it in a violent
> and bloody and unjust fashion, because it is claimed, and in my
> opinion falsely, that that will lead to a more just society, in which
> the state will wither away, in which the proletariat will be a
> universal class and so on and so forth. If it weren't for that future
> justification, the concept of a violent and bloody dictatorship of the
> proletariat would certainly be unjust. Now this is another issue, but
> I'm very sceptical about the idea of a violent and bloody dictatorship
> of the proletariat, especially when expressed by self-appointed
> representatives of a vanguard party, who, we have enough historical
> experience to know and might have predicted in advance, will simply be
> the new rulers over this society.
>
>
> FOUCAULT:
> Yes, but I haven't been talking about the power of the proletariat,
> which in itself would be an unjust power; you are right in saying that
> this would obviously be too easy. I would like to say that the power
> of the proletariat could, in a certain period, imply violence and a
> prolonged war against a social class over which its triumph or victory
> was not yet totally assured.
>
>
> CHOMSKY:
> Well, look, I'm not saying there is an absolute.. . For example, I
> am not a committed pacifist. I would not hold that it is under all
> imaginable circumstances wrong to use violence, even though use of
> violence is in some sense unjust. I believe that one has to estimate
> relative justices.
> But the use of violence and the creation of some degree of
> injustice can only be justified on the basis of the claim and the
> assessment-which always ought to be undertaken very, very seriously
> and with a good deal of scepticism that this violence is being
> exercised because a more just result is going to be achieved. If it
> does not have such a grounding, it is really totally immoral, in my
> opinion.
>
>
> FOUCAULT:
> I don't think that as far as the aim which the proletariat proposes
> for itself in leading a class struggle is concerned, it would be
> sufficient to say that it is in itself a greater justice. What the
> proletariat will achieve by expelling the class which is at present in
> power and by taking over power itself, is precisely the suppression of
> the power of class in general.
>
>
> CHOMSKY:
> Okay, but that's the further justification.
>
>
> FOUCAULT:
> That is the justification, but one doesn't speak in terms of
> justice but in terms of power.
>
>
> CHOMSKY:
> But it is in terms of justice; it's because the end that will be
> achieved is claimed as a just one.
> No Leninist or whatever you like would dare to say "We, the
> proletariat, have a right to take power, and then throw everyone else
> into crematoria." If that were the consequence of the proletariat
> taking power, of course it would not be appropriate.
> The idea is-and for the reasons I mentioned I'm sceptical about
> it-that a period of violent dictatorship, or perhaps violent and
> bloody dictatorship, is justified because it will mean the submergence
> and termination of class oppression, a proper end to achieve in human
> life; it is because of that final qualification that the whole
> enterprise might be justified. Whether it is or not is another issue.



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