MICHEL FOUCAULT, info.

John Ransom wrote:

>When did he stop being synonymous with Marxism? Do you seriously mean to
>assert that you detect no serious tendencies toward exclusionary
>tactics and logic in the history of Marxist thought and practice?

etc.... and onto quotes from KM about the "dictatorship of the proletariat."

I was away for the weekend and am just catching up, so apologies if this
seems out of sequence.

What government of any kind doesn't exclude? Challenge capitalist property
rights - say a group of strikers occupies a plant, or peasant farmers
challenge the right of private propertyholders to enclose previously common
land, or a colony tries to liberate itself from its colonizers - and you
will end up in jail or the target of military force. What's the alternative
to this? Some sort of banal American pluralism that denies the relations of
force and power hidden behind all its blather? As Richard Feinberg,
formerly of the Overseas Development Council and now of the U.S. National
Security Council put it before joining the Clinton administration,
democracy only works when there's consensus on the nature of property.
Translation: now that death squads and proxy wars have imposed that
consensus in Latin America, "democracy" - meaning elections where all the
fundamental political questions are ruled out of order - can flourish.

Are American Foucaultians just Madisonians in disguise?

Doug