Returning Foucault to Marx and Lenin

[Alec Ramsdell]

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

* * *

The following from Ollman's _Dialectical
Investigations_ helps clarify theoretically what I
have in mind by how successful political and
micro-political acts could change the political
parameters and build solidarity, in the context of
theory outside the power/resistance dialectic.

pp. 52-53

  A permanent and total resolution occurs when the
elements in contradiction undergo major qualitative
change, transforming all their relations to one
another as well as the larger system of which they are
a part.  An economic crisis that gives rise to a
political and social revolution is an example of this.

 Here, the initial contradictions have moved well
beyond what they once were [as well as the
micro-political contradictions: multiplied political
"identities" internal to the working class--race,
gender, etc., as you note], and are often so different
that it may be difficult to reconstruct their earlier
forms.  What determines whether the resolution of a
contradiction will be partial or total, of course, is
not its dialectical form, the fact that differences
get abstracted as contradictions, but its real
content.  However, such content is unlikely to reveal
its secret to anyone who cannot read it as a
contradiction [stepping outside the power/resistance
deadlock].  By including the undermining interaction
of mutually dependent processes in the same unit, by
expanding this unit to take in how such interaction
has developed and where resolution, it is Marx's broad
abstractions of extension that make it possible to
grasp such varied movements as internal and necessary
elements of a single contradiction.

[end]

Ollman singles out an economic crisis as the
fundamental contradiction giving rise to political and
social revolution.  The same can apply at the
micro-political "extension of abstraction", of the
sort of conflicts you describe internal to the working
class (employee and employer, care-giver and patient,
etc.), the resolution of conflicting "identities" to
labor (vs. capital) coming when the role of capital is
seen in these conflicts.

Alec

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