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NATIONAL INTEREST
possible. The modern state can be overturned only by a coup d'etat,
sometimes misnamed "revolution."
CHOMSKY:
Well, this may surprise you, but I tend to agree with a lot
of those remarks, except some of those predictions, which I am not
so sure about. I do think that the problem in foreign policy is
essentially a moral one. I'm certainly not in favor of replacing the
present ruling grouP . with some other ruling group, which in my
opinion will act in approximately the same way. I don't see fun–
damentally much
differenc~
in systems, with respect to foreign policy,
between state capitalism of the American type and state socialism
of the Soviet type.
1
began by talking about the very striking and
remarkable fact that in the Pentagon Papers there is no case, not a
single case, of any decision made on anything other than the cost to
the decision-maker and the interests that he represents. The absolute
heights or depths of immorality, whichever way they go. And that
might very well be the case under the rule of the society by some
different ruling group. On the other hand, I think that the only place
where I would tend to be more optimistic is that I don't believe that
it is necessary to have a powerful state ruled by some group. I think
that in principle in an advanced technological society it is possible,
feasible and, in fact, necessary - one might argue for survival, maybe
even physical survival, but at least moral survival - to destroy cen–
tralized power, whether it be authoritarian power of private capital–
ism or state socialism or whatever. And I think one may hope–
you can't prove it, but one may hope - that under a system which
is less immoral in its structure of power and decision-making and
more democratic, it is conceivable that human beings will be able to
act more morally, that their decent moral instincts, which I think
exist, wi!! not be corrupted by the system of coercion and authority,
of which private capitalism or state capitalism is one instance and
Soviet state socialism is another.
ROBERT JAY LIFTON:
We have been preoccupied with the basic cause,
or fundamental cause, and there has been a sort of polite difference of
opinion. But in the process we've left out what might be called the
in-between
modus vivendi
of the whole process. One thing that strikes
me about the Pentagon Papers, and I'm sure it must have struck
both of you, is what I would call the tremendously technicist bias.
There really is a notion, without the actors being aware of it, of the
world being made of a large machine: one puts certain parts in place
with American know-how and solves the "problem" over there in Viet–
nam without being able for various reasons to ask in any large or cer–
tainly moral way whether the problem should be solved by Americans,
or what the goals of solving the problem are. How do each of you see
