[lbo-talk] Bush and Foucault

wrobert at uci.edu wrobert at uci.edu
Tue Jun 5 22:42:53 PDT 2007


I highly doubt that Foucault ever thought to spend all that much time thinking about Lenin's philosophy (Pannekoek and Gorter both had less than kind things to say though and managed to remain Marxists), but Foucault's work always had a materialist basis to it. I'm not sure why one can't engage with Marx and Nietzsche at the same time. Many of the Italian Marxists of the 70's did it without damage. Last, Foucault's relationship to the Marxist tradition is clearly vexed, most likely because of the nature of the PCF. There are moments when he insists that Marxism is crucial to his project and other points when he tries to distance himself.

The most important books for my engagement with Foucault is Discipline and Punish and the History of Sexuality books. Discipline and Punish is primarily concerned with the apparatuses needed to produce abstract 'labor power' and the end of the book quotes extensively from Capital. The history of sexuality introduction criticizes a certain Freudo-Marxism, but primarily as a criticism of a particular reading of Freud by those authors that reads power as primarily repressive. robert wood


> However, I think Lenin is correct to articulate that Marx and Engels held
> for the existence of objective reality, but maybe Foucault did, too. Does
> he
> ? Does Foucault declare on Lenin's position on this issue of the existence
> of objective reality ? A fundamental philosophical issue is materialism
> for
> Marx. Is Foucault a materialist in the Marxist sense, after his shift ?
> What
> is his position on practical-critical activity ?
>
> On the other hand, in what I have read of Foucault, he himself seems to be
> differentiating himself from Marx philosophically. I can't buy the move
> from
> the "CP to Nietzche" as a step _toward_ Marx ( but then somebody will
> declare for a pluralist approach to Marx, or Marx as liberal : "There are
> many Marxes; even Marx wasn't a Marxist; down with Stalinist-Soviet dogma
> and rigidity", all kidding aside). Admire Nietzche, sure, but
> Marx-Nietszche
> eccleticism ? Uhhhhh...
>
>
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