Human Nature: Justice versus Power, Noam Chomsky debates with Michel Foucault

   "    And so I think that the student-
    revolutionaries, if you like, have a point, a partial point :
    that is to say, it's a very important thing in a modern advanced
    industrial society how the trained intelligentsia identifies
    itself. It's very important to ask whether they are going to
    identify themselves as social managers, whether they are going to
    be technocrats, or servants of either the state or private power
    , or, alternatively, whether they are going to identify
    themselves as part of the work force, who happen to be doing
    intellectual labour.    If the latter, then they
    can and should play a decent role in a progressive social
    revolution. If the former, then they're part of the class of
    oppressors"

  Production at the heart of the proletariat? A society should
  protect those who produce value

   "   I think we're safer in hoping for progress on
    the basis of those human instincts than on the basis of the
    institutions of centralised power, which, I believe, will almost
    inevitably act in the interest of their most powerful components"

   "It seems to me that modern technology, like the technology of
    data-processing, or communication and so on, has precisely the
    opposite implications. It implies that relevant information and
    relevant understanding can be brought to everyone quickly. It
    doesn't have to be concentrated in the hands of a small group of
    managers who control all knowledge, all information and all
    decision-making. So technology, I think, can be liberating, it
    has the property of being possibly liberating; it's converted,
    like everything else, like the system of justice, into an
    instrument of oppression because of the fact that power is badly
    distributed"

   "Well, civil disobedience in the U.S. is an action undertaken in
    the face of considerable uncertainties about its effects"

  I think this is really what being a progressive is about -
  progress despite the uncertain nature of our conceptions a just
  society towards which we are progressing. It means taking action
  despite our knowledge of the fact that intrinsic cultural
  conditions, parochialisms, human mind limit our access to truth

   "I would think that ultimately it would make very good sense, in
    many cases, to act against the legal institutions of a given
    society, if in so doing you're striking at the sources of power
    and oppression in that society"

  Obligatory behavior to confront oppressive aspects within any
  system - Note: doesn't require one to reject that system

   "Only creativity is possible in putting into play of a system of
    rules; it is not a mixture of order and freedom"

   "I would claim then that this instinctive knowledge, if you like
    , this schematism that makes it possible to derive complex and
    intricate knowledge on the basis of very partial data, is one
    fundamental constituent of human nature. In this case I think a
    fundamental constituent because of the role that language plays,
    not merely in communication, but also in expression of thought
    and interaction between persons; and I assume that in other
    domains of human intelligence, in other domains of human
    cognition and behaviour, something of the same sort must be true
    .    Well, this collection, this mass of
    schematisms, innate organising principles, which guides our
    social and intellectual and individual behaviour, that's what I
    mean to refer to by the concept of human nature"

   "And contrary to what you think, you can't prevent me from
    believing that these notions of human nature, of justice, of the
    realisation of the essence of human beings, are all notions and
    concepts which have been formed within our civilisation, within
    our type of knowledge and our form of philosophy, and that as a
    result form part of our class system; and one can't, however
    regrettable it may be, put forward these notions to describe or
    justify a fight which should-and shall in principle--overthrow
    the very fundaments of our society. This is an extrapolation for
    which I can't find the historical justification. That's the point"
 
 - Human Nature: Justice versus Power, Noam Chomsky debates with Michel Foucault
   http://r6.sharedcopy.com/4lefv4k