Returning Foucault to Marx & Lenin (was Re: coerced treatment)

Ian Murray seamus2001 at home.com
Fri Jun 15 12:23:36 PDT 2001


That's what
> is implicit in Marx's works, made clearer by Lenin's criticism of
> Economism (which also serves as criticism of narrowly focused social
> movements):
>
> ***** Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers
> only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle,
> from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers.
> The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge
> is the sphere of relationships of all classes and strata to the
state
> and the government, the sphere of the interrelations between all
> classes. For that reason, the reply to the question as to what must
> be done to bring political knowledge to the workers cannot be merely
> the answer with which, in the majority of cases, the practical
> workers, especially those inclined towards Economism, mostly content
> themselves, namely: "To go among the workers." To bring political
> knowledge to the workers the Social Democrats must go among all
> classes of the population; they must dispatch units of their army in
> all directions.
>
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/what-itd/ch03.htm#03 _A>
> *****
========= Hence the social scientist's quest for the archimedian point/olympian epistemology and know-it-all vanguardism are to be repeated? Lot's of metaphor to decontruct in 'ol Vlady's rhetoric....

Ian


>
> To change Foucault's theory to fit it into Leninism against his
> intention: particular resistances -- of workers against employers,
of
> students against teachers, of the disabled against doctors,
> scientists, & care-giving workers, ad infinitum -- are "never in a
> position of exteriority in relation to power" on their own; in fact,
> the existence of particular power relations -- constituted by &
> constitutive of the contradiction between capital and labor--
> "*depends* upon a multiplicity of points of resistance" (emphasis
> added, _The History of Sexuality_, p. 95). Political knowledge
> necessary for the abolition of capitalism & establishment of
> socialism can be gained only by stepping in theory outside
particular
> dialectics of power & resistance & acquiring the point of view that
> can see "the sphere of relationships of all classes and strata to
the
> state and the government, the sphere of the interrelations between
> all classes" that necessarily extends beyond national boundaries.
>
> Yoshie
>
> P.S. Allow me to cc this to PEN-l also, since the discussion here
is
> related to the discussion there.



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