MICHEL FOUCAULT
459
journalists. spectators.
etc.
when a psychiatrist or psychologist tells them
not to be afraid to find a defendant guilty. that they will not be punishing
the offender. but merely providing for his/her rehabilitation and cure.
The defendant is found guilty. sentenced. imprisoned. The court is
acquitted.
To suggest an alternative to punishment is to avoid the issue. which is
not the judicial context of punishment. nor its techniques. but the power
suucture that punishes. This is why I find the problem of criminal justice
in the Soviet Union so interesting.
It
is easy to mock the theoretical con–
tradictions that characterize the Soviet penal system. but these are theories
that kill. and blood-stained contradictions. One can also be surprised that
they weren't able to
come
up with new ways of dealing with crime and
political opposition; one must be indignant that they adopted the method
of the bourgeoisie in its most rigid period. at the beginning of the nine–
teenth century. and that they pushed it
to
a degree of meticulousness that
is overwhelming.
Their dimensions unknown. the mechanisms of power in the Soviet
Union-systems of control. surveillance. punishment-are versions of
those used on a smaller scale and with less consistency by the bourgeoisie
as it suuggled to consolidate its power. One can say to many socialisms.
real or dreamt: Berween the analysis of power in the bourgeois state
and the idea of its future withering away. there is a missing term: the
analysis. criticism. destruction. and overthrow of the power mechanism
itself. Socialism and socialist societies have no need for new declarations
of human rights and freedoms: simple. thus unnecessary. But
if
they want
to be worthy of love and no longer rejected. they must address themselves
to the question of power and its exercise. Their task is
to
invent a way in
which power can be exercised without instilling fear. That would be a
uue
innovation.
- Translatedfrom the French
by
Mollie
HOTUlitz.
