jake williams
24th September 2008, 04:21
The issue I'd like to address is, I think, one of the most fundamental to any leftist theory one might like to engage in, but is very very rarely addressed, and while it's quite simple in my head, I'm having a lot of trouble articulating it.
I'm reading a book titled something to the effect of "The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature". It's a collection of interviews, essays, etc. discussing the two individuals' different approaches to a range of theoretical questions. In an interview with Chomsky, he's asked, if I remember correctly, what he thinks the difference is between himself and M. Foucault regarding their approaches to politics. He says this:
For him, if I understand him rightly, what we can imagine now is nothing but a product of the bourgeois society of the modern period: the notions of justice or of "realization of the human essence" are only the inventions of our civilization and result from out class system. The concept of justice is thus reduced to a pretext advanced by a class that has or wants to have access to power. The task of a reformer or revolutionary is to gain power, not to bring about a more just society. Questions of abstract justice are not posed, and perhaps cannot even be posed intelligibly. Foucault says, again if I understand him correctly, that one engages in the class struggle to win, not because that will lead to a more just society. In this respect I have a very different opinion. A social struggle, in my view, can only be justified if it is supported by an argument - even if it is an indirect argument based on questions of fact and value that are not well understood - which purports to show that the consequences of this struggle will be beneficial for human beings and bring about a more decent society. Let us take the case of violence. I am not a committed pacifist, and thus do not say that it is wrong to use violence in all circumstances, say in self-defense. But any recourse to violence must be justified, perhaps by an argument that it is necessary to remedy injustice. If a revolutionary victory of the proletariat were to lead to putting the rest of the world in the crematoria, then the class struggle is not justified. It can only be justified by an argument that it will bring an end to class oppression, and do so in a way that accords with fundamental human rights. Complicated questions arise here, no doubt, but they should be faced. We were in apparent disagreement, because where I was speaking of justice, he was speaking of power. At least, that is how the difference between our points of view appeared to me.I should say that Chomsky's views expressed here are startlingly close to my own. Moreover, I rarely see the topic addressed, and that disturbs me. To me it seems very critical - there's a big difference between what are posed almost as analyses of deterministic historical processes, that economic and historical conditions create a group of people which will and should take power over the whole society - some of the arguments almost start to sound Nietzschean - and the far more complex (but ironically far easier to understand) task of trying to determine what society would be "good for people".
You get to define goodness, you debate about that, but the point is this is how it's framed - and not along the lines of historical dynamics of power and class.
Generalizing a bit, I don't like the part of the Left that has what we can provisionally call this "power" focus (or for that matter, the whole "science" focus, not because science is bad or inapplicable, but because the applications I've seen seem to me to be a combination of obfuscation and amoral abstraction). I think workers should control their own lives because I think that leads to happier, fuller people and communities. If I thought a dictatorship or capitalism would lead to this end and workers' control wouldn't, I'd support, respectively, dictatorship or capitalism. I think that's how it should be framed. And I should say that I don't think that's how Karl Marx, or a number of other Left theorists, seem to approach the question.
The next question I have, which I'll more directly and less confrontationally address, is why it seems to me this first question is never really raised, or addressed. It's just not seen as an issue, it's never discussed. Maybe every communist I've met in person, and many I've read, take the "goodness" view, at least in practice. We share common views, on specific issues especially, that the goal of any policy position, any belief about what should happen in the world, is based on doing good things for people (and perhaps animals, or some other special entities which are themselves special cases enough they needn't really be addressed). It's a sort of moral pragmatism, but it seems to me far more sensible than the approach of a lot of intellectuals. And what I wonder is why, because to me there seems to be a huge discontinuity between the two approaches, the two coexist so closely and with so little friction in organizations. Why is this never mentioned?
I'm reading a book titled something to the effect of "The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature". It's a collection of interviews, essays, etc. discussing the two individuals' different approaches to a range of theoretical questions. In an interview with Chomsky, he's asked, if I remember correctly, what he thinks the difference is between himself and M. Foucault regarding their approaches to politics. He says this:
For him, if I understand him rightly, what we can imagine now is nothing but a product of the bourgeois society of the modern period: the notions of justice or of "realization of the human essence" are only the inventions of our civilization and result from out class system. The concept of justice is thus reduced to a pretext advanced by a class that has or wants to have access to power. The task of a reformer or revolutionary is to gain power, not to bring about a more just society. Questions of abstract justice are not posed, and perhaps cannot even be posed intelligibly. Foucault says, again if I understand him correctly, that one engages in the class struggle to win, not because that will lead to a more just society. In this respect I have a very different opinion. A social struggle, in my view, can only be justified if it is supported by an argument - even if it is an indirect argument based on questions of fact and value that are not well understood - which purports to show that the consequences of this struggle will be beneficial for human beings and bring about a more decent society. Let us take the case of violence. I am not a committed pacifist, and thus do not say that it is wrong to use violence in all circumstances, say in self-defense. But any recourse to violence must be justified, perhaps by an argument that it is necessary to remedy injustice. If a revolutionary victory of the proletariat were to lead to putting the rest of the world in the crematoria, then the class struggle is not justified. It can only be justified by an argument that it will bring an end to class oppression, and do so in a way that accords with fundamental human rights. Complicated questions arise here, no doubt, but they should be faced. We were in apparent disagreement, because where I was speaking of justice, he was speaking of power. At least, that is how the difference between our points of view appeared to me.I should say that Chomsky's views expressed here are startlingly close to my own. Moreover, I rarely see the topic addressed, and that disturbs me. To me it seems very critical - there's a big difference between what are posed almost as analyses of deterministic historical processes, that economic and historical conditions create a group of people which will and should take power over the whole society - some of the arguments almost start to sound Nietzschean - and the far more complex (but ironically far easier to understand) task of trying to determine what society would be "good for people".
You get to define goodness, you debate about that, but the point is this is how it's framed - and not along the lines of historical dynamics of power and class.
Generalizing a bit, I don't like the part of the Left that has what we can provisionally call this "power" focus (or for that matter, the whole "science" focus, not because science is bad or inapplicable, but because the applications I've seen seem to me to be a combination of obfuscation and amoral abstraction). I think workers should control their own lives because I think that leads to happier, fuller people and communities. If I thought a dictatorship or capitalism would lead to this end and workers' control wouldn't, I'd support, respectively, dictatorship or capitalism. I think that's how it should be framed. And I should say that I don't think that's how Karl Marx, or a number of other Left theorists, seem to approach the question.
The next question I have, which I'll more directly and less confrontationally address, is why it seems to me this first question is never really raised, or addressed. It's just not seen as an issue, it's never discussed. Maybe every communist I've met in person, and many I've read, take the "goodness" view, at least in practice. We share common views, on specific issues especially, that the goal of any policy position, any belief about what should happen in the world, is based on doing good things for people (and perhaps animals, or some other special entities which are themselves special cases enough they needn't really be addressed). It's a sort of moral pragmatism, but it seems to me far more sensible than the approach of a lot of intellectuals. And what I wonder is why, because to me there seems to be a huge discontinuity between the two approaches, the two coexist so closely and with so little friction in organizations. Why is this never mentioned?