Every now and again, when I’m listening to Chomsky, I burst out laughing. He is always dry and careful, his delivery rarely changes, and this makes his more devastating put-downs all the more outrageous.
Here Chomsky and Foucault are discussing the idea of justice in civil disobedience:
Foucault: I would simply like to respond to your first sentence, when you said that, if you didn’t consider the war you wage against the police, to be just, you wouldn’t wage it. I would simply like to reply to you in terms of Spinoza and tell you that the proletariat does not wage war against the ruling class because it considers such a war to be just. The proletariat wages war against the ruling class because it wants, for the first time in history, to take power. And because of its will to overthrow power it considers such a war to be just. One wages war to win, not because it is just.
Chomsky: I don’t personally agree with that. For example, if I could convince myself that the attainment of power by the proletariat would lead to a terroristic 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.
https://youtu.be/3wfNl2L0Gf8?t=3351