This is an interesting question. Are Marx and Foucault opposed? I think so. I also think you're way over-estimating the potential of Foucault's theory to generate militants agitating for a classless society (our goal?). Here's why.
(1) Foucault's attitude towards his own project. He has said in an interview: "It is true that my attitude isn’t a result of the form of critique that claims to be a methodical examination in order to reject all possible solutions except for the one valid one." I think this contrasts clearly with Marx's idea of a "scientific socialism" which very much was the 'one valid solution.' Foucault has also expressed as a goal "Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia," a statement which fits well with post-modernist dismissal of "grand narratives" but much less well with Marx, the inventor of a whole "unitary and totalizing paranoia [ie a theoretical system]." Similarly, he has advised militants, "Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth." These statements lead credence to my believe that Foucault's position was one which attaked the priority given to class in Marx's anaylsis -- this would be using thought/analysis to ground politics in the Truth of class struggle. Foucault is clearly for "micro-politics" rather than class-politics. One could say this is the main 'programmatic' differences between Foucault and Marx.
(2) Of course, these programmatic differences are based in deeper theoretical differences.
Interestingly I have a quote from Michel Foucault (practically the spokesman for kink in the philosophical domain) about S&M which I think will shed light on the deeper anti-Hegelian/anti-dialectical understanding of desire which leads Foucault to his micro-politics:
"S&M is not a relationship between he or she who suffers and he or she who inflicts suffering, but between the master and the one on whom he exercises his mastery. What interests the practitionersnof S&M is that the relationship is at the same time regulated and open. It resembles a ches game in the sense tht one can win and the other lose. The master can lose in the S&M game if he finds he is unable to responds to the needs and trials of his victim. Conversely, the servant can lose if he fails to meet or can't stand meeting the challenge thrown at him by the master. This mixture of rules and openness has the effect of intensifying sexual relations by introducing perpetual novlty, a perpetual tension and a perpetual uncertainty which the simple consummation of the act [ie simple intercourse] lacks. The idea is also to make use of every part of the body as a sexual instrument."
Judith Butler, epitome of a queer theorist, inteprets this: "In the above description, Foucault appears to defend the desirability of dissatisfaction, suggesting that the failure to achieve erotic resolution of opposites is itself and eroticizing experience... Foucault's erotics of perpetual reversal [ie every time S&M is practiced, the chess game begins anew] is a generative activity which resists the possibility of closure... The failure to achieve a final satisfaction for desire is in Foucaultian terms, a significant achievement, the triumph of eros over an immobilizing law, or equivalently, the erotic mobilization of the law. Indeed, for Foucault, what a Hegelian perspective would understand as 'futile' s now reappropriated as productive, generative, life-affirming. It is less the resolution of opposition than its erotic celebration that becomes the normative model for desire."
I believe the key idea is the following: Foucault seeks to resist the closure of any system of oppositions. The act of sexual intercourse is just one such 'closing' -- the S-M ritual-game is a way to prevent such closing.
Hegel's dialectics is for Foucault another 'closure' of a system of oppositions. Butler again:
"For Hegel and for most readers of Hegel in France, the confrontation between an agency of domination and a subordinate agency always takes place on the presumption of a shared social reality. Indeed, it is the recognition of this common social ground that constitutes each agency as a social agency and so becomes the basis of the constitution of historical experience. ... Foucault appears then to be reversing the Hegelian claim altogether, arguing that historical experience 'emerges' precisely at that point where common gound cannot be ascertained, i.e, in a confrontation between differentially empowered agencies whose difference is not mediated by some more fundamental commonality. Indeed, for Foucault, domination is not a single stage [or a finite number of stages] in an historical narrative whose ultimate destination is decidedly beyond domination. Domination is, rather, the ultimate scene of history, the repeated scene, one that does not engender a dialectical inversion but continues to impose itself in various ways."
Of course, I believe there is some truth to this. However, the main thrust of it is that "the negation of the negation" does not exist as a category of being. Marx always explicitly endorsed this cateogry -- "the expropriation of the expropriators" is one example. Dialectical closure of the oppositional positions capitalist/worker does occur when the negation of the negation occurs, i.e., when the Revolution happens. I am not asserting Marx believed in "the transcendence of social relations," but rather the transcendence of class-based hierarchical social relations. That Foucault believes it is ultimately impossible to overcome class-based hirearchical social relations is reflected consistently in his insistence on micro-politics, rather than a grander Marxist approach.
In short, Marx believed in the possibility of the "final satisfaction" to be found in the Revolution, in the proletariat "closure" of an oppositional class system, in the Hegelian 'negation of the negation' -- all of these things, I think I've shown, Foucault decidely took issue with. Yes, in some sense, Marx did envision a society in which hierarchy and domination would be transcended insofar as class hierarchy and class domination would be transcended. This doesn't mean that micro-domination won't exist post-Revolution for Marx, but that macro-domination won't.
The insistence on the un-ending-ness of domination of the class variety in Foucault is also seen in his consistent endorsement of Nietzsche. I believe this is what Ted Winslow was pointing out in connecting Foucault and Nietzsche -- Foucault himself always saw the validity of this connection (for ex, in his use of the term "geneology" which is taken directly from Nietzsche). Nietzsche and Foucault share the celebration of dissatisfaction (see above for Foucault and Nietzsche's celebration of the violent will-to-power) rather than Marx's goal of eliminating/minimizing dissatisfaction of human needs/wants.
Now to respond to Brian Dauth:
"But what if people enjoyed erotic D/s before the dawn of class society?"
Do you have any evience of this? I don't nor have I heard of any. I think there is a reason that both Sadism and Masochism are named after thoroughly modern men.
Next: "I am convinced that people have a genetic predisposition to D/s by decades of experience in the kink community, interacting with and learning from people who live D/s as part of their lives."
I have three problems with this. (1) Decades of experience in the kink community is precisely NOT the type of evidence which can establish whether kink is based on a genetic predisposition. The only type of evidence which can -- scientific rather than anecdotal -- is precisely the kind which doesn't exist. (2) Your argument seems to rest on the presumption that only those who "live kink" can "know knink." This is backed up by 2 other comments you made, (i) "She can see it that way, but her vision is not necessarily reality. Do you know how much of her time was spent studying/living kink life?" and (ii) "It is fine that he theoretically roots it there, but again, did this decision emerge from his studying/living kink life?" This is an odious rhetorical device in that it allows you to avoid the substantive content of the comment -- and parallel to saying only african-americans can analyze racism correctly. (3) The desire to ground sexual practices -- especially deviant ones -- in genetics is, imho, is grounded in heteronormativity. It's akin to saying "My sexuality is as natural as yours!" whereas a radical perspective is one which rejects the whole idea of (deviant or nondeviant) sexuality as natural. I would like to expand this point further, but I'll keep it brief because there is more to respond to.
More from Brian: "The Buddha came to the same insight [of rejecting identitarianism], just 2,500 years before Foucault."
Well, I didn't want to make this about religion, but your continued insistence upon doing so leads me to make the following comments on Buddhism:
Buddhism is what Slavoj Zizek has called "Buddhism is a kind of negative of the ethics of the Good" in the sense that it is aware that every positive Good is a lure, and so, in response to this Buddhist insight that every Good is actually another source of suffering "it fully assumes the Void as the only true Good." I believe that this is actually quite an accurate understanding of Buddhism, as the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha read that "all life involves suffering; all suffering is due to attachment and ultimately to ignorance; if we could abolish the cause, the effect, too, would disappear; the discipline recommended in the Noble Eightfold Path will lead to this cessation." In this regard, Walter Kaufmann has noted that "Buddhism does not by any means place a supreme value on truth, and it certainly does not extol the search for truths." For Buddha, the supresme concern is not truth but salvation. I think all of the above description of Buddhism can simply be stipulated, as it is not controversial. Indeed, I think Brian made the same point when he said "Buddhism realizes that existence is ever changing particulars rooted in emptiness."
On this understanding of Buddhism, I find Buddhism to be both incompatible with being a self-identified queer as well as with being a self-identified radical/progressive in politics.
The political implications of Buddhism are dangerous, in contrast to the usual idea that Buddhism is more "gentle" or "balanced, holistic, ecological approach."
Slavoj Zizek writes on this topic: "It is not only that Western Buddhism, this pop-cultural phenomenon preaching inner distance and indifference toward the frantic pace of market competition, is arguably the most efficient way for us fully to participate in capitalist dynamics while retaining the appearance of mental sanity -- in short, the paradigmatic ideology of late capitalism. Oe should add that it is no longer possible to oppose this Western Buddhism to its 'authentic' Oriental version... Not only do we hae today, among top Japanese managers, a widespread 'corporate Zen' phenomenon; for the whole of the last 150 years, Japan's rapid inductrialization and militarization, with its ethics of discipline and sacrifice, have been sustained by the large majority of Zen thinkers -- who today knows that D.T. Suzuki himself, the high guru of Zen in America in the 1960s, supported in his youth in 1930s Japan, the spirit of utter sicipline and militaristic expansion? [See B.Victoria's _Zen at War_.] There is no contradiction here, no manipulative perversion of the authentic compassionate insight: the attitude of total immersion in the selfless 'now' of Enlightenment ... in which all reflexive distance is lost .. perfectly legitimizes subordination to the militaristic social machine."
Since you/Brian made your point especially noting Zen, I'd like to draw attention to the following thoughts from leading Zen thinkers:
Ishihara Shummyo: "Zen is very particular about the need not to stop one's mind. As soon as flint stone is struck, a spark bursts forth. There is not even the most momentary lapse of time between these two events. If ordered to face right, one simply faces right as quickly as a flash of lightning... If one;s name were called, for example, 'Uemon,' one should simply answer 'Yes' and not stop to onsider the reason why one's name was called... I blieve that if one is called upon to die, one should not be the least bit agitated." [Quoted in Victoria's 'Zen at War']
D.T. Suzuki agrees with this spirit, adding "it is really not [the soldier] but the sword itself which does the killing. He had no desire to do any harm to anybody, but the enemy appears and makes himself the victim. It is though the sword performs automatically its function of justice, which is the function of mercy."
In reference to these quotes which seem to indict Buddhism, Slavoj Zizek writes:
"Nonetheless, it is all too simple either to say that this militaristic Zen is a perversion of the true Zen message or to see in it the ominous 'truth' of Zen: the truth is much more unbearable -- what if, in its very kernel, Zen is ambivalent, or rather, utterly indifferent to this alternative? What if... the Zen meditation technique is ultimately just that: a spiritual technique, an ethically neutral instrument which can be put to different sociopolitical uses, from the most peaceful to the most destructive?"
When Ichikawa Hakugen the Japanese Buddhist listed the twelve characteristics of the Buddhist tradition which prepared the ground for the legitimization of militarism in an act of radical self-criticism, he had to include pracitically all the basic tenets of Buddhism itself! Included in this list-- this is for you Brian --is the Buddhist doctrine of NO-SELF!
(For similar reasons, one can see why Heinrich Himmler's favorite book -- which he supposedly always had a copy of on his person -- was the Bhagavad-Gita).
(The lesson Zizek draws from this, which I wouldn't mind debating, is that Buddhist all-encompassing Compassion has to be opposed to "Christian intolerant, violent Love... a violent passion to ... privilege and elevate some object at the expense of others.")
More Brian: "But Buddhism demands that any of its tenets be empirically provable. Buddhism is not opposed to science, but rather, an ally."
Where do you get this idea from? I think it's wrong insofar as Buddhism, as I noted, is not about the search for truth but the search for salvation.
Brian: "When I whip somebody I am assuming the identity of a sadist. What I must keep in mind, however, is that I am both being and not-being a sadist at the same time"
Why must you assume any identity to engage in any particular sexual practice?
More Brian: "Why shouldn't we praise Foucault for his radical anti-Hegelianism? And while we are on the subject, what is so great about Hegel? He hated African peoples and thought Prussia was the be-all end-all of civilization. Is it just he wrote so much that he made possible the production of tens of thousands of Masters/Ph.D. theses? I'm serious, what practical, pragmmatic tool did he give to the world that can help end suffering? I know lbo-talk is a Hegel-happy elist, but from what has been posted, I am unimpressed. What am I missing?"
Firstly, Marx (despite Althusser's protest to the contrary) was a Hegelian. That's how I first came to see "what's so great about Hegel."
The "practical, pragmatic tool" which he invented was a system of thought which in the hands of political radicals has become the framework to effect a productive analysis of society. No Hegel, no Marx. Most importantly, the idea of dialectics, though present in philosophy before Hegel, was intensely developed by Hegel. It allows for the idea that there is a radical (class) antagonism which is constitutive of capitalist society.
(Besides, for a "buddhist" aren't you a little concerned with what is "pragmatic"?)
You are severely misinformed if you think Hegel was a conservative who nationallistically supported the Prussian State. I can recommend readings both in Hegel and secondary literature for more details, but Hegel was decidedly not either conservative or nationalistic nor even a romantic. He was a liberal! Not a radical, of course, but a bona fide liberal in the "John Kerry liberal" sort of way, if I can put it that way.
"To draw correlations between erotic D/s and economic D/s seems very shaky." I agree, but Foucault and Butler do make a connection a bit differently than the one mentioned previously, as I discussed above.
Sorry this was so long, I wanted to reply to 2 emails in one. Mike