But leave aside the question of political criticism and the
specific implications of the real Gulag. Even the most superficial
sense of histories and societies outside North America and Western
Europe should be enough to temper the enthusiasm with which
specific judicial and punitive modes are so easily associated with
crises in capitalism, changes in productive relations, cycles of unemployment,
fiscal problems of the state, or whatever. This is
not wrong politics but bad theory.
I have alluded to some of the reasons for this type of theoretical
problem: analytical despair, over-generalization, adversarial
nihilism, the culture of pessimism, political ethnocentrism. But
perhaps there is an even deeper defence mechanism at work.
Alongside the specifically conservative need for order and symmetry
(which expresses itself in the quest for the purified city),
intellectuals at various moments have been known to search for
metaphysical absolutes and certainties. Isaiah Berlin has eloquently
considered the Russian case.9 He argues that at moments of historical
crisis, people trade their doubts and agonies for deterministic
views, for psychological cravings after 'essences' and certainties.
This is an illusory quest. A tough-minded world view (Berlin's
'pluralism') demands that we tolerate contradictions and inconsistencies.
There. can be no totally valid general solutions, only
temporary expedients based on our clearly stated values and our
sense of the uniqueness of each historical juncture. The question