SA wrote:
>
> 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.
> >
> >
I don't see the hole. I see only that Foucault begins with a recognition of reality and that Chomsky simply keeps insisting on the existence of the non-existent.
I still think Chomsky's actual contributions to the struggle have been wholly positive, even though his moralistic theory is completely false.
Neither major soial refdorms nor a revolution can be brought abut by a completely self-consistent movment. It has never happened, and it won't. There will be radical disagreements withn any movement of the future as there have been in the past. How are these disagreements resolved. Through struggle. (Struggle can be very peaceful and it can be incredibly bloody. There is no power outside history to dictate one or the other of this range of possibilitiesd.
Carrol