Alec Ramsdell wrote:
>
[Yoshie wrote]:
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. . .
[Long quotation from Ollman clipped]
> 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.
LBO readers not subscribed to pen-l will be in a position of an astronomer observing wild gyrations of a star system without having any awarness of black holes -- the black hole in this instance being a wide-ranging and multi-centered debate on pen-l over (a) the very nature of capitalism and (b) the origins of the system. That debate tends to focus attention on the dynamic of capitalism at the very highest (or lowest in the sense of fundamental) level of abstraction: workers vs. capitalist and the necessity that "workers of all countries unite." It tends, then, _not_ to feature all those elements that are opposed to and block any such unity -- e.g., most centrally imperialism, male supremacy and, in the U.S., the oppression of blacks (and the derivative oppression of other 'races'). That (temporary) emphasis can ignite empty discussions of whether to "privilege" class or race or gender, which as Barbara Fields has remarked, is as silly as though mathematicians were to spend their time arguing over whether to privilege the numerator or denominator of a fraction.
In fact it was discussion of Foucault on Pen-L (If I remember correctly from a day or so ago) that triggered the debate on capitalist origins. But those of us who have been drawn into the orbit of the black hole over on pen-l will at some point return to take up the issues which Alec calls attention to.
Carrol