aerdil posted:
as far as i can tell chomsky is essentially a positivist lmao

Chomsky getting owned by Foucault:

FOUCAULT:
If you like, I will be a little bit Nietzschean about this; in other words, it seems to me that the idea of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power. But it seems to me that, in any case, the notion of justice itself functions within a society of classes as a claim made by the oppressed class and as justification for it.


CHOMSKY:
I don't agree with that.


FOUCAULT:
And in a classless society, I am not sure that we would still use this notion of justice.


CHOMSKY:
Well, here I really disagree. I think there is some sort of an absolute basis--if you press me too hard I'll be in trouble, because I can't sketch it out-ultimately residing in fundamental human qualities, in terms of which a "real" notion of justice is grounded.
I think it's too hasty to characterise our existing systems of justice as merely systems of class oppression; I don't think that they are that. I think that they embody systems of class oppression and elements of other kinds of oppression, but they also embody a kind of groping towards the true humanly, valuable concepts of justice and decency and love and kindness and sympathy, which I think are real.
And I think that in any future society, which will, of course, never be the perfect society, we'll have such concepts again, which we hope, will come closer to incorporating a defence of fundamental human needs, including such needs as those for solidarity and sympathy and whatever, but will probably still reflect in some manner the inequities and the elements of oppression of the existing society.
However, I think what you're describing only holds for a very different kind of situation.
For example, let's take a case of national conflict. Here are two societies, each trying to destroy the other. No question of justice arises. The only question that arises is which side are you on ? Are you going to defend your own society and destroy the other ?
I mean, in a certain sense, abstracting away from a lot of historical problems, that's what faced the soldiers who were massacring each other in the trenches in the First World War. They were fighting for nothing. They were fighting for the right to destroy each other. And in that kind of circumstance no questions of justice arise.
And of course there were rational people, most of them in jail, like Karl Liebknecht, for example, who pointed that out and were in jail because they did so, or Bertrand Russell, to take another example on the other side. There were people who understood that there was no point to that mutual massacre in terms of any sort of justice and that they ought to just call it off.
Now those people were regarded as madmen or lunatics and criminals or whatever, but of course they were the only sane people around.
And in such a circumstance, the kind that you describe, where there is no question of justice, just the question of who's going to win a struggle to the death, then I think the proper human reaction is : call it off, don't win either way, try to stop it-and of course if you say that, you'll immediately be thrown in jail or killed or something of that sort, the fate of a lot of rational people.
But I don't think that's the typical situation in human affairs, and I don't think that's the situation in the case of class-conflict or social revolution. There I think that one can and must give an argument, if you can't give an argument you should extract yourself from the struggle. Give an argument that the social revolution that you're trying to achieve is in the ends of justice, is in the ends of realising fundamental human needs, not merely in the ends of putting some other group into power, because they want it.

Summary: there is fundamental justice but I can't explain where it comes from because that would reveal it is rooted in bourgeois ideology and im a liberal...then a bunch of bullshit that has nothing to do with anything.

Whole thing is really good if you want to see the king liberal get owned

http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm

but anyway I'm not that interested in the limitations of Chomsky, Finkelstein. More interesting is the role that they play in the system, which is so effective as a propaganda machine that someone like Chomsky can call the US an evil regime and Israel monstrous and oppressive and be encouraged rather than suppressed.

babyfinland posted:
i'm actually not sure why this is making news now, it's rather suspicious imo. he's always held this position, which is that the simplest and most effective attack on zionism is to simply demonstrate that it is not abiding by the law. i don't really see a problem with that

most effective in a rhetorical/persuasive sense or most effective in a final status sense?

gyrofry posted:
im not going to defend finkelstein on this, but i recently heard an interesting talk of his in which he sort of explained how his approach has changed from the marxism of his youth to his current international law rhetoric -- not because of the intrinsic value of international law rhetoric, but primarily because of the fact that 'marxist language' no longer had currency or relevance to contemporary society

i think it was this one

Marxism was internationalist. Marxism and internationalism was associated with the Soviet Union and so when it fell they became discredited.

It would be like if prior to the left-right political divide Catholicism was associated with internationalism and so when the pope was deposed internationalism and Catholicism was thought to be the corrupt beliefs of a failed religion.

Personally, I don't care if an internationalist says they're Marxist or not. Internationalism is the morally correct belief but everyone hates it because being internationalist means a huge obligation to all of humanity that would create a huge burden and require a lot of sacrifice when all you get in return is the fact that you're morally good.

It's easy to blame one person like Finkelstein or Chomsky for modifying their beliefs according to their time or failing to adhere to a strictly dogmatic leftist principle but the reality is the left has failed catastrophically internationally and the few individuals who represent internationalist beliefs have practically no support among the people of any significantly powerful nation. Those who want to stick a knife into these few remaining opposition figures are the same idiots who alienate religious people because they think believing in an imaginary man in the sky is dumb. If they actually paid attention to world affairs and cared they would realize they don't have the luxury to be choosy and should just be happy to see an internationalist opposition exist at all today.

I honestly wonder what people on the left who bitch about what little they have are going to do when these aging residual figures from a time when the left had some hope of having any potential to change the world are finally snuffed out.

You do realize you'll have nothing, right? There won't even be a facsimile of an opposition to U.S. foreign policy.

Edited by internationalist (Feb. 18, 2012 08:12:10)