Foucault's beef with the concept of class struggle?

[Yuppie Grinder]

Anyone who's read Foucault wanna explain this to me?

[bricolage]

his main beef was with the idea that you can struggle against one central site of authority or exploitation and that it was instead operated on a 'capillary' scale, ie. power emanates from and can be resisted at pretty much ever point in society. I guess that comes into conflict with class struggle as it contradicts the production process being the central point of exploitation... in a way, it's not as different as some people like the make out.

[hatzel]

Hmm...I'm not sure if it's entirely fair to claim that Foucault had a problem with the concept of class struggle, only with the conception of class struggle, so to speak. By this I mean that Foucault certainly wasn't opposed to the idea of class-characterised moments of struggle, nor did he turn a blind eye to class dynamics and antagonisms, nor did he denigrate the labour movement (in an abstract sense; he certainly criticised many of the actually-existing institutions of organised labour, but that's another question) - all this I'm including under the broad banner of 'the concept of class struggle,' as opposed to the conception, which I'm using to refer to the manner in which it was theoretically grasped.

The latter Foucault was certainly dubious of (in much the same way that I'm dubious of my ability to do him justice here :lol:), for a number of reasons, some of which I'll try to order very(!!!) briefly here. If class struggle is to be understood as an antagonistic coming together of amorphous, homogeneous, pre-existing entities (e.g. 'the proletarian/-t' and 'the bourgeois(ie)'), then Foucault is certainly an opponent of class struggle theory; in Foucault we see a denial of such 'subjects' of struggle, in favour of what could be described (by me, I'm certainly not quoting) as 'temporary subjectivities concomitant with temporal struggles.' There are two elements to consider here: 1) 'the struggle' is not seen as some continuous thread tearing through space and time, but as somehow fractured, consisting of a great many largely isolated moments of struggle around a variety of issues on distinct - though somewhat interconnected - hierarchies, which may (or may not) function together as a wider challenge to existing power arrangements, yet cannot be wholly subsumed into a single process, 'the Struggle,' of a certain concrete nature; and 2) the 'identity' (not necessarily the best word to use, giving Foucault's critique of identity, but I'm doing that on purpose because I'm a cheeky little so-and-so) of the belligerents emerges only through the struggle itself - rather than existing beforehand - and as such waxes and wanes with the constantly-shifting nature of struggle/s they participate in, resulting in an equally flexible position of subjectivity, which cannot function as a universal 'subject' (revolutionary or otherwise) in all times, places and situations - it certainly cannot be considered as a radical opposition to prevailing power structures, as any identity is necessarily constituted by that very same power.

The next (perhaps) relevant point continues Foucault's rejection of the overly simplistic understanding of power that traditional understandings of class struggle arguably rely on: power as the property of some dominant group - class or otherwise - which is thereafter denied to those other groups in the hierarchical arrangement. In this case, one speaks unambiguously of 'the ruling class' as a singularity, considered to somehow 'hold' power, and some contesting class 'outside' of power, deprived of it, estranged from it. For Foucault, famously, 'power is everywhere,' not emanating from some dominant group, but acting through them, as much as it can operate through those groups often considered to stand in opposition to it.

Here it may be worth citing Foucault's own words, a brief overview of his four 'aims' in his analysis of power:


to investigate what might be most hidden in the relations of power; to anchor them in the economic infrastructures; to trace them not only in their governmental forms but also in the infra-governmental or para-governmental ones; to discover them in the material playThe third point (and also the first) is the relevant one here, referring to the workings of power not only within governmental structures and the various formal institutions associated with this power, but also outside of them, emanating from any number of sources and in a variety of directions, rather than simply moving outwards from this centralised concentration of authority - this challenges a 'dualistic' understanding of struggle as an overarching binary opposition between antagonistic classes across the borders of power, calling instead for a sequence of not entirely contiguous quasi-insurrectionary expressions - only some of which will assume class characteristics, without ever reducing struggle in general to exclusively class-based terms.

...okay I'm starting to notice that I really quite suck at this, somebody else should do it for me :(

[Yuppie Grinder]

Nah that's good. I don't quite buy it just off that summary but I'll have to read some Foucault. Any good Marxist responses to his critique that you know of? Maybe form Althusser?