MICHEL FOUCAULT
455
that the Twentieth Congress seemed to suggest, it is because the weak–
nesses in Soviet society are structural and lie in the mode of production,
and not simply in a more-or-Iess bureaucratized leadership.
Foucault:
It
is undoubtedly true that although the Soviets indeed changed
the distribution of property and the role of the state in the control of pro–
duction, they merely adopted certain power and management techniques
.perfected by nineteenth-century European capitalism. The particular
morality, esthetic forms, and disciplinary methods that already func–
tioned effectively by 1850 in European bourgeois society-its forms of social
control-were adopted wholesale by the Soviets. I think the system of
imprisonment was invented as a generalized penal system during the
eighteenth century and consolidated in the nineteenth century in con–
nection with the development of capitalist societies and states. More–
over, the prison system was only one of the techniques of power neces–
sary to the development and control of the forces of production. The
dis–
ciplined life-discipline in school, at work, in the army-is also a tech–
nical innovation of that period. And techniques are easily transplanted.
Just as the Soviets adopted the principles of scientific management and
other related management techniques developed in the West, they also
adopted our disciplinary techniques, adding one new weapon, party
discipline, to the arsenal we had perfected .
Int:
It
seems to me that Soviet citizens have even more difficulty than
Europeans in understanding the political significance of these mecha–
nisms. I see proof of this in the unfortunate prejudice of Soviet dissidents
against nonpolitical prisoners. Solzhenitsyn's descriptions of the latter are
absolutely chilling. His "ordinary" criminals are subhuman creatures in–
capable of expressing themselves in any known language. The least we.can
say about his attitude is that he shows them no compassion.
Foucault:
The hostility shown toward "ordinary" crimin"als by those who
consider themselves political prisoners can seem shocking to those of us
who think that poverty, rebellion, and the rejection of exploitation and
humiliation are at the root of delinquency. But we must
tty
to look at things
in terms of their tactical relevance. We must take into account the fact
that in the Soviet Union, just as in France or elsewhere, the criminal ele–
ment is controlled, infiltrated, and manipulated by those in power.
Among criminals as among noncriminals, rebels are a minority and con–
formists a majority. Do you think that a system of punishment that pro–
duces recidivism could have been maintained
if
criminal behavior did not
serve some function? Early in the nineteenth century it became obvious
