Post-Structuralism and Marxism

[Hexen]

Long ago back in 2008 I've been debating with these people in this thread (http://www.shadownessence.net/forum/topic/27937-revolutionary-technocracy/page__pid__503036__st__20#entry503036) which this person named "Giant Mantis" in particular said some rather interesting stuff which actually kinda confused me for a long time. (Note: To remove confusion, the part bolded where we're discussing here is the Technocracy (http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Technocratic_Union) from Mage: The Ascension which is a World of Darkness gameline which back then I suggested that the Technocracy should be more "leftist" than based on conspiracy theories at the time).


There never will be a 'true communist' society, you know why..

Because even making a statement like 'society X isn't communist', or 'you have been force fed capitalist propaganda' is using and creating power. You're already oppressing people, by denying their conceptualization of themselves, and it's disgusting patronizing.
hat may be true, but everyone does that.. It's just part of the tyranny of signification. You're doing it right now by regulating and enforcing terms like 'capitalism,' 'propaganda' and, best of all, 'truth.' Thus, you're trying to force these signifiers to apply to me, and I'm doing the opposite to you. It's a battle, and whoever's reality wins is the oppressor. That's the ultimate problem in claiming there can be a world without oppression. Oppression isn't some grandiose dichotomy between rulers and ruled.. it's the creation and enforcement of ideas. Culture is enforced by power. Morality and Law are enforced by power. Ideology is enforced by power, and Leftist ideologies are no exception. You can't ever escape power.. But then, power isn't a bad thing, it creates resentment, resistance and change. Without power, everything would be stagnant because there'd be nothing to align yourself against.

Don't read Marx, read Foucault.. He does things with Marx you wouldn't believe. Biopower is the perfect model for technocratic rule. It goes beyond Marxism or capitalism and taps right into the thought that makes those ideas possible. That's where the oppression is, not some outward, blatant stratification of society.

Oppression isn't just people telling you what you can't do, it's also whatever decides what you want to do, and what what you don't want to do, or what's possible or impossible..

Well.. I guess Marx and Adam Smith lived in different worlds, and saw different things.

What you have to remember, of course, is that just as you can say there has never been a real communism, plenty of people have argued that there has equally never been a real capitalism. The state is always there as a centralized power, regulating the economy and providing a dominant power center. You're also misunderstanding the ideal of the relationship between rich and poor in capitalist societies, I think.. the rich need the poor, they need them to provide labor, and they need them to provide the consumption which sustains their wealth. As long as there is competition, as long as people aren't dependent on one source, they can't be exploited. In fact, the entire structure of society becomes based around serving their needs, people compete to provide for them, and those who fail to provide on competative terms lose the power and influence they had rapidly.

The problem is that that chaos is easily lost as market controllers emerge and monopolies develop. But then, the same is true of revolutionary leftist ideologies.. I'm sure Lenin wanted to give up power and let Marx's ideas play out in a perfect utopia, but he just never had a chance.. The revolution was constantly under attack, and he had to protect it, which means he had to take up the reigns of authority to do so. We're back to the fundamental problem that ideas can't sustain themselves without authority. Unless the idea of communism or socialism or anarchy is enforced on everyone, it doesn't work, because people will just laugh and do their own thing.Any response to this or thoughts?

[ChrisK]

Its quite a lot of nonsense. I recommend Alex Callinicos's Against Postmodernism, which argues against post-structuralism.

Additionally, his claims about oppressing by arguing against people's conceptualization of the self is something that would be done by everyone. He is doing that by callling you patronizing.

Also, his claims about impositions of definitions is simply anti-scientific. All specialized discourse requires that the terms involved be defined. Else wise no one would understand the other.

[Hit The North]

Like Foucault he says some provocative things but without a shred of evidence to back it up.


There never will be a 'true communist' society, you know why..

Because even making a statement like 'society X isn't communist', or 'you have been force fed capitalist propaganda' is using and creating power. You're already oppressing people, by denying their conceptualization of themselves, and it's disgusting patronizing.
But of course, it doesn't matter what we call a society its the actual relations that underpin it that makes it what it is. For someone who bangs on about power a lot, the writer betrays some innocence of how discourses plug into it and are not equally plugged into it. So in order to oppress someone by denying their conceptualisations you first have to make your reconceptualisation stick and that requires a resource of power that lies outside mere discourse. If all discourses are equally infused with power as the writer suggests, then my denial of someone else's conceptualisation of themself will carry equal weight to theirs and therefore any effect would be nulled, unless back-up by some other power.


Biopower is the perfect model for technocratic rule. It goes beyond Marxism or capitalism and taps right into the thought that makes those ideas possible. That's where the oppression is, not some outward, blatant stratification of society.This just sounds like fancifulness as wtf is 'biopower' anyway and even once defined you have to ask the question in who's interest is this power utilised? And this takes us back to material interests as they are constituted in society (whatever you wish to call it). Plus, it is worth noting that Marxism isn't an "idea" but a collection of empirical and theoretical observations about capitalist society. And capitalism isn't an idea either but a mode of production.


What you have to remember, of course, is that just as you can say there has never been a real communism, plenty of people have argued that there has equally never been a real capitalism. The state is always there as a centralized power, regulating the economy and providing a dominant power center.
The writer seems to be operating from the point of view of a theoretical pure capitalism - the utopian vision of a self-regulating market. But like all utopias it has never and could never exist. Actually, the very existence of a centralised state demonstrates the impossibility of this theoretically pure capitalism existing. Private property relations demand enforcement of law and protection from capricious banditry. Rational and generalised market exchange demands contract law. Moreover, the perpetuation of a system of accumulation based on the exploitation of labour demands that the exploited have the threat of the jackboot at their throats. If anything, the existence of centralised states in all capitalist societies is a further endorsement of the Marxist conception of capitalism as riven by inequality and class struggle.

You must insist on only reflecting on actually existing capitalism and not allow him to drag you into the world of abstractions - where he is obviously most at home.

[blake 3:17]

It's interesting and provocative. Do others know where Foucault's term "bio-power" comes from?

The post-structuralist thinkers I think have made the most of Marxist thinking have been Deleuze and Guattari.

I think the Callinicos book is relatively weak as a criticism -- he does give some ground to Foucault and D&G. Callinicos is a bit strange intellectually. Foundationally he savages Althusser as an Althusserian. I enjoyed his 2006 book, The Resources of Critique, which seems a tad more sympathetic to some post structuralist thought.

One of the challenges of contemporary Western socialism is the role that revolutionary academics play, especially those employed in the social sciences. Someone like Chomsky, and some people in the literary&tc part of academia of can sometimes get messages across that sociologists, political scientists/economists, can't.

We have an amazing brilliant radical lawyer here, whose mainstay is teaching pure math. This gives him a lot of leverage outside the class room, because he is judged on his mathematics for work and social views are irrelevant.

Apologies for the thread drift. To the OP, any interest in Derrida? I'd avoided him for a couple of reasons, but found his bits and pieces book on Paper, super interesting & fairly radical -- especially around immigrants issues.

[Lucretia]

In my reading of Foucault, I get the impression that he is examining how the macrostructures of power are experienced at the level of the individual body (hence, his term biopower), which can be perfectly consistent with a Marxist position. He sometimes drifts into language which espouses a kind of agnosticism about where power comes from, but we do not need to follow him down this anti-sociological path. There is value to his project of thinking of power in terms of microstructures, even if we have to qualify it.

[ckaihatsu]

In my reading of Foucault, I get the impression that he is examining how the macrostructures of power are experienced at the level of the individual body (hence, his term biopower), which can be perfectly consistent with a Marxist position. He sometimes drifts into language which espouses a kind of agnosticism about where power comes from, but we do not need to follow him down this anti-sociological path. There is value to his project of thinking of power in terms of microstructures, even if we have to qualify it.


Sorry, but *any* kind of postmodernism *is* inconsistent with Marxism -- "microstructures" conceptualizes a purely individualistic approach to the sociological issue, and so plays right into the bourgeois "self-made individual" myth. The conceptualization neatly serves a divide-and-conquer strategy in which we are encouraged to atomize ourselves instead of seeing our strength in our *social* form, *especially* as organized laborers.

[hatzel]

As Foucault himself said (and I paraphrase in a far more vicious tone), anybody who reads his works (and those of the other so-called 'post-structuralists,' I would argue) and doesn't recognise them as an extension of Marx's thought is showing their ignorance. Either they haven't read these 'post-structuralist' works closely enough (if at all) or they aren't particularly familiar with Marxism.

Food for thought...

[ckaihatsu]

Then, just for the record, I'll stand on my assertion itself, independently of 'post-structuralism' or any kind of postmodernism.