There are a couple claims on the table that are fruitful to
examine.
1) "the possible difference between the two lies in the
opposition between a fundamentally socail subject (Marx) and
an inscribed individuality."
2)"Marx assumes a prior substance (labour force) upon which
capitalist relations operate in the mode of
appropriation/alienation."
3)Marx says in the PAris manuscripts (and maintains
throughout) that social labour is the species-essence of
mankind.
The Marx depicted here is the early Marx from the Economic
and Philsophical manuscripts, which, as Althusser has
demonstrated in For Marx and Reading Capital, is the
essentialist humanist Marx whom Sartre, Fromm, and other
existentialists were quick to incorporate. Althusser calims
that an "epistemic Break" occurred in Marx's writings around
the time of the publication of "The Holy Family," when Marx
left Paris for Brussels. The "break' is a rdical break away
from the terms of teh Hegelain dialectic. According to
Althusser (and there is evidence to support a number of his
claims), Marx did more than invert the dialectic - that is,
perform a Feuerbachian reversal on it, replacing "Spirit"
with homo faber - for this would have left him with an
unhappy dilemma: go the route of subjectivism - or speak of
an objective socail essence which emantes from a subject (as
Sartre does later on); or go the route of economic
determinism, and have the laws of history grind out the
motor of change (Engels, the Second International,
fatalism). In Marx's "scientific" writings (where
historical materialism is teh science Marx develops having
broken away from the ideology of German idealism) he is
neither a humanist,noran essentialist, because Marx's
later criticisms of Hegel's "metaphysics" (see The German
Ideology, and THe Poverty of Philosophy) involve neither a
teleologicval plan of history, where histroy itself is a
subject (in criticizing "the idealist view of history," he
claims "that is why history, like truth, becomes a person
apart, a metaphysical subject of which real human subjects
are but the bearers..." - "The Holy Family") nor an
essentialist conception of the individual. It was the
economists who held such a conception, because in order to
spell out the "natural price' of a commodity, they had to
hypostatasize needs. Marx also broke with Feuerbach's
humansim shortly after deflating hegel's metaphysics: "the
human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single
individual. in its reality it is the ensemble of socail
relations."("Theses on Feuerbach)
Teh radical break marx made from any form of essentialism or
humanism involved a radicval transformation of the
dialectic to one of structural causality (this is
Althusser's term, and though it is a very one-sided reading
of Marx, don't you think Foucault had this pounded into his
head by Althusser?) Soceity is conceptualized as a
decentred, complex whole with relations in teh
superstructure holding a relative autonomy, and detertmined
"in the last instance" by economic relations in times of
rupture of crisis.
Granted, this last part is a little thick, very problematic,
questionable from a Marxian perspective (which isn't really
there anyway, if the claim is true), and so on. But this
reasding does suggest that claim #3 above, tht Marx
maintains metaphysical claims bout hte species-essence
throughout, is at the very least problematic itself.
Two question concerning Marx and the relation to Focualt
arise:
1. What is Marx's conception of socail reality?
2. Is there room for an individualizing function in modern
societies?
First of all, Marx claimed that socail relatuions themselves
are produced materially. In criticizing Proudhon, Marx
claims that "Proudhon the economist understands very well
that men make, cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite
relations of production. But what he has not understood is
that these definite social relations are just as much
produced by men as linen, flax, etc."("The Poverty of
Philosophy").
I could go on. The general point is that relations of
production have an historical ontology, if you will, but so
do the Focuauldian disciplines. They are not necessarily
the "expressions" of subjects (however conceived), bu they
are socail and general, in their functionand conception.
Prduction is essentially social, because a number of
relations ar brought into the picture from a history of
labour. The same could easily be said of schools, barracks,
prisons, etc. The "disciplines," I am starting to suggest,
are coneptualized along a Marxian plane.
2. What is hte individaulizing function of capitalism? This
is quite a complex question, and Marx answers it in a number
of places, but Marx makes it clear that there are several
forms of "individuality" which coorespond to the emergence
of the bourgoisie, and the division of labour and the
deskilling of labour. Thus there are two major "positive'
sense of individuality: one correspong to the abstract
individual as the bearer of rights, freedom, and other
bourgois mytifications; the other corresponding to "labour
power" - the one who has an historically incribed set of
habits, skills, etc. As the capitalist machinery increases
its output and capital investments to reduce labour costs,
the 'individual becomes more and more anonymous. Surplus
labour, the mass of the unemployed, the mechanized
individaul, etc. are now simply functions in the lager
machinery of production. As far as the Metaphysically
endowed subject goes, rights, freedom of movement, speech
etc., all of which the bourgoisie "revolutionized" in
overthrowing the aristocracy, are gradually stripped away
from workers as the mass begins to threaten the power of the
bourgeoisie.
Foucault's "disciplines" are essential to both
individuakizing functions - the first corresponding to forms
of production, the second corresponding to forms resistance.
Yes, there is a repressive element in the Focuaultdian
disciplines, that's why he is always congratulatory when
speaking of the Frankfurt school. But he also emphasizes
that the "individual" is a productive individual.
I will close with one more observation from Marx ( if
anyone's bothered to read this far). In The Poverty of
Philosophy, Marx criticizes Proudhon for holding that there
is both a positive and a negative element in any productive
activity, and that true revolutionary activity (or whatever
Proudhon was after) conists in weeding out hte positive. he
then looks at a few forms of production, including slavery
in North America. How could it be, Marx asks, that we could
weed out the positive content of slavery (the mass
production of cotton) from its negative content?Teh
contradiciton in modern forms
of produciton are inherent to the very procedures.
Why can't we look at the repressive/productive aspects of
the disciplines in the same way? We can, as long as we keep
in mind what Marx continually points out in hte later works
-that forms of production invovle an aspect of reproduction.
Take the principle that the more the worker produces, the
grater is his subjugation; this also, it seems to me, is the
effect that the disciplines have on the disciplinary
subject.
examine.
1) "the possible difference between the two lies in the
opposition between a fundamentally socail subject (Marx) and
an inscribed individuality."
2)"Marx assumes a prior substance (labour force) upon which
capitalist relations operate in the mode of
appropriation/alienation."
3)Marx says in the PAris manuscripts (and maintains
throughout) that social labour is the species-essence of
mankind.
The Marx depicted here is the early Marx from the Economic
and Philsophical manuscripts, which, as Althusser has
demonstrated in For Marx and Reading Capital, is the
essentialist humanist Marx whom Sartre, Fromm, and other
existentialists were quick to incorporate. Althusser calims
that an "epistemic Break" occurred in Marx's writings around
the time of the publication of "The Holy Family," when Marx
left Paris for Brussels. The "break' is a rdical break away
from the terms of teh Hegelain dialectic. According to
Althusser (and there is evidence to support a number of his
claims), Marx did more than invert the dialectic - that is,
perform a Feuerbachian reversal on it, replacing "Spirit"
with homo faber - for this would have left him with an
unhappy dilemma: go the route of subjectivism - or speak of
an objective socail essence which emantes from a subject (as
Sartre does later on); or go the route of economic
determinism, and have the laws of history grind out the
motor of change (Engels, the Second International,
fatalism). In Marx's "scientific" writings (where
historical materialism is teh science Marx develops having
broken away from the ideology of German idealism) he is
neither a humanist,noran essentialist, because Marx's
later criticisms of Hegel's "metaphysics" (see The German
Ideology, and THe Poverty of Philosophy) involve neither a
teleologicval plan of history, where histroy itself is a
subject (in criticizing "the idealist view of history," he
claims "that is why history, like truth, becomes a person
apart, a metaphysical subject of which real human subjects
are but the bearers..." - "The Holy Family") nor an
essentialist conception of the individual. It was the
economists who held such a conception, because in order to
spell out the "natural price' of a commodity, they had to
hypostatasize needs. Marx also broke with Feuerbach's
humansim shortly after deflating hegel's metaphysics: "the
human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single
individual. in its reality it is the ensemble of socail
relations."("Theses on Feuerbach)
Teh radical break marx made from any form of essentialism or
humanism involved a radicval transformation of the
dialectic to one of structural causality (this is
Althusser's term, and though it is a very one-sided reading
of Marx, don't you think Foucault had this pounded into his
head by Althusser?) Soceity is conceptualized as a
decentred, complex whole with relations in teh
superstructure holding a relative autonomy, and detertmined
"in the last instance" by economic relations in times of
rupture of crisis.
Granted, this last part is a little thick, very problematic,
questionable from a Marxian perspective (which isn't really
there anyway, if the claim is true), and so on. But this
reasding does suggest that claim #3 above, tht Marx
maintains metaphysical claims bout hte species-essence
throughout, is at the very least problematic itself.
Two question concerning Marx and the relation to Focualt
arise:
1. What is Marx's conception of socail reality?
2. Is there room for an individualizing function in modern
societies?
First of all, Marx claimed that socail relatuions themselves
are produced materially. In criticizing Proudhon, Marx
claims that "Proudhon the economist understands very well
that men make, cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite
relations of production. But what he has not understood is
that these definite social relations are just as much
produced by men as linen, flax, etc."("The Poverty of
Philosophy").
I could go on. The general point is that relations of
production have an historical ontology, if you will, but so
do the Focuauldian disciplines. They are not necessarily
the "expressions" of subjects (however conceived), bu they
are socail and general, in their functionand conception.
Prduction is essentially social, because a number of
relations ar brought into the picture from a history of
labour. The same could easily be said of schools, barracks,
prisons, etc. The "disciplines," I am starting to suggest,
are coneptualized along a Marxian plane.
2. What is hte individaulizing function of capitalism? This
is quite a complex question, and Marx answers it in a number
of places, but Marx makes it clear that there are several
forms of "individuality" which coorespond to the emergence
of the bourgoisie, and the division of labour and the
deskilling of labour. Thus there are two major "positive'
sense of individuality: one correspong to the abstract
individual as the bearer of rights, freedom, and other
bourgois mytifications; the other corresponding to "labour
power" - the one who has an historically incribed set of
habits, skills, etc. As the capitalist machinery increases
its output and capital investments to reduce labour costs,
the 'individual becomes more and more anonymous. Surplus
labour, the mass of the unemployed, the mechanized
individaul, etc. are now simply functions in the lager
machinery of production. As far as the Metaphysically
endowed subject goes, rights, freedom of movement, speech
etc., all of which the bourgoisie "revolutionized" in
overthrowing the aristocracy, are gradually stripped away
from workers as the mass begins to threaten the power of the
bourgeoisie.
Foucault's "disciplines" are essential to both
individuakizing functions - the first corresponding to forms
of production, the second corresponding to forms resistance.
Yes, there is a repressive element in the Focuaultdian
disciplines, that's why he is always congratulatory when
speaking of the Frankfurt school. But he also emphasizes
that the "individual" is a productive individual.
I will close with one more observation from Marx ( if
anyone's bothered to read this far). In The Poverty of
Philosophy, Marx criticizes Proudhon for holding that there
is both a positive and a negative element in any productive
activity, and that true revolutionary activity (or whatever
Proudhon was after) conists in weeding out hte positive. he
then looks at a few forms of production, including slavery
in North America. How could it be, Marx asks, that we could
weed out the positive content of slavery (the mass
production of cotton) from its negative content?Teh
contradiciton in modern forms
of produciton are inherent to the very procedures.
Why can't we look at the repressive/productive aspects of
the disciplines in the same way? We can, as long as we keep
in mind what Marx continually points out in hte later works
-that forms of production invovle an aspect of reproduction.
Take the principle that the more the worker produces, the
grater is his subjugation; this also, it seems to me, is the
effect that the disciplines have on the disciplinary
subject.