> Because in this way power and discourse are coextensive, "Emancipation
> cannot consist in ascending to a power-free discourse..."
>
> Further, "If there is to be an emancipatory potential in discourse, it
> must consist of the transformation rather than the transcendence of
> power."
>
> This, of course, goes against any hope of a classless society, eh? Does
> anyone have any thoughts on a Marxist criticism of such an argument?
> Hopefully it isnt too abstract?
> Any criticism I've seen of this rests, as I mentioned, on psychoanalysis
> but I'm curious to hear of other approaches?
I have not given this my full attention to the problem you pose but my first instinct would be to deploy the following strategy:
1. To recognize that M. Foucault was not particularly taking on Marx so much as Marxism and a particular reading and practice of Marxism on the continent. Upon this reading of M. Foucault, which is fair because he says we ought to read all things in this manner, the question of M. Foucault's relationship to Marx has to be thought about alongside his relationship to the Marxism of his time and milieu.
2. More directly, therefore, I would want to argue that setting up M. Foucault and Marx in opposition is misleading because it tends to generate the kinds of identities (false I think) that you have generated here, i.e., a hierarchical society = class society. The two are not the same thing. Class societies are based upon a particular set of unique historical social relations which produce a particular field of power. Nowhere does Marx suggest that a communist society would be non-hierarchical (without relations of power). Indeed Marx's project is the transformation of existing social relations not the transcendence of social relations. To see what I am getting at, try this sentence: "Marx thought we could transcend social relations and that under communism there would not be any social relations." Sounds silly and quite unlike anything you could find in Marx or imagine him to have wrote. I think Foucault fits nicely alongside Marx rather than in opposition. Anyway that is my first cut at the problem you have posed.
Travis