Karl: Is that one person you?
> Ross writes:
> >
> > I would like to start a new thread in this list,
>
> Under the circumstances, I'm sure I speak for all but one person on
> the list when I say: THANK-YOU.
>
> > namely, the individualising
> > effects of power. It blows away the Marxist concept of the 'class
> > struggle'. I'll give you an example. In a recent study of redundant
> > workers, there is an individisible connection between thought and action;
> > how human beings see themselves positioned in the world and ideas that
> > have been psychologically inculcated over time. When individuals in the
> > study were repeatedly turned down for jobs, damage to the self had already
> > been legitimised through historical conditioning. What is more, pressure to
> > believe they were inadequate was intensified through the individualising
> > effects of power which pits potentially redundant and workers actually
> > redundant against one another. Thus they became pawns to classify,
> > categorise and control.
> >
> > [etc.]
>
> Ross,
>
> The examples you give may well suggest that what Foucault says about
> "the individualising effects of power" has some "empirical" support.
> Fair enough. The examples also suggest, more generally, that Foucault
> has some interesting things to say, and that those interested in
> social theory (etc.) ought to take his ideas seriously. I would be
> the LAST person to deny that.
>
> However, you haven't made it clear why you think that the ideas in
> question "blow away the Marxist concept of the 'class struggle,'"
> which you even enclose in scare-quotes (perhaps suggesting that there
> is no such thing).
>
> First of all, do you really think that an account that tells people,
> as you put it, how "they became pawns" is capable of replacing an
> account of how it is that groups of people act collectively (as they
> sometimes do) to radically transform political and economic
> structures?
>
> (By the way, I think Foucault's notion of power, which explicitly
> entails that power cannot operate except in a context of antagonistic
> interaction -- i.e., in the face of resistance --, specifically rules
> out the idea that human beings can be made pawns, strictly speaking;
> but either way, Foucault does not seem to offer a competing theory of
> social-structural change, "a theory of social evolution," as Habermas
> calls historical materialism).
>
> Finally, I will ask a very specific question: do you think that any
> conception OTHER THAN the Marxist conception of class struggle can
> offer a credible accout of what was happening in France, from October
> to December of 1995, when literally MILLIONS of French workers
> participated in a strike wave, supported by millions more who joined
> them in hundreds of mass demonstrations. This wave of POLITICAL
> STRIKES, in which millions of workers attempted to use their potential
> power to stop production as a means to enforce changes to a government
> austerity plan, is readily intelligible in Marxist terms. If any
> perspective hopes not only to supplement Marxism, but to "blow it
> away," it would have to be capable of explaining the French strike
> wave at least as well as Marxism can. Nothing in your post indicated
> how Foucault's insights into the "individualising effects of power"
> were capable of doing any such thing.
>
> (Marx's idea, of course, is that the events like those in France are
> "political struggles, i.e., struggles of class against class," and
> that it is struggles of THAT KIND that account for radical
> social-structural changes, such as the transition from Feudalism to
> Capitalism. Strictly speaking, Marx had a much more complicated
> theory, which distinguished between the "immediate" cause -- class
> struggle -- and the cause "in the last analysis" -- the dialectic of
> forces and relations of production. But I don't think that these
> matters are relevant here).
>
> The question is: can we dispense with the concept of class struggle,
> even in our efforts to understand CURRENT EVENTS (e.g., the USA's
> "Contract with America", the French strikes, and so on)?
>
> Steve D.
> SoBlo
> Toronto
> (C.U.P.E. Local 3902!!!)
>
>
Yours etc.,
Karl
> Ross writes:
> >
> > I would like to start a new thread in this list,
>
> Under the circumstances, I'm sure I speak for all but one person on
> the list when I say: THANK-YOU.
>
> > namely, the individualising
> > effects of power. It blows away the Marxist concept of the 'class
> > struggle'. I'll give you an example. In a recent study of redundant
> > workers, there is an individisible connection between thought and action;
> > how human beings see themselves positioned in the world and ideas that
> > have been psychologically inculcated over time. When individuals in the
> > study were repeatedly turned down for jobs, damage to the self had already
> > been legitimised through historical conditioning. What is more, pressure to
> > believe they were inadequate was intensified through the individualising
> > effects of power which pits potentially redundant and workers actually
> > redundant against one another. Thus they became pawns to classify,
> > categorise and control.
> >
> > [etc.]
>
> Ross,
>
> The examples you give may well suggest that what Foucault says about
> "the individualising effects of power" has some "empirical" support.
> Fair enough. The examples also suggest, more generally, that Foucault
> has some interesting things to say, and that those interested in
> social theory (etc.) ought to take his ideas seriously. I would be
> the LAST person to deny that.
>
> However, you haven't made it clear why you think that the ideas in
> question "blow away the Marxist concept of the 'class struggle,'"
> which you even enclose in scare-quotes (perhaps suggesting that there
> is no such thing).
>
> First of all, do you really think that an account that tells people,
> as you put it, how "they became pawns" is capable of replacing an
> account of how it is that groups of people act collectively (as they
> sometimes do) to radically transform political and economic
> structures?
>
> (By the way, I think Foucault's notion of power, which explicitly
> entails that power cannot operate except in a context of antagonistic
> interaction -- i.e., in the face of resistance --, specifically rules
> out the idea that human beings can be made pawns, strictly speaking;
> but either way, Foucault does not seem to offer a competing theory of
> social-structural change, "a theory of social evolution," as Habermas
> calls historical materialism).
>
> Finally, I will ask a very specific question: do you think that any
> conception OTHER THAN the Marxist conception of class struggle can
> offer a credible accout of what was happening in France, from October
> to December of 1995, when literally MILLIONS of French workers
> participated in a strike wave, supported by millions more who joined
> them in hundreds of mass demonstrations. This wave of POLITICAL
> STRIKES, in which millions of workers attempted to use their potential
> power to stop production as a means to enforce changes to a government
> austerity plan, is readily intelligible in Marxist terms. If any
> perspective hopes not only to supplement Marxism, but to "blow it
> away," it would have to be capable of explaining the French strike
> wave at least as well as Marxism can. Nothing in your post indicated
> how Foucault's insights into the "individualising effects of power"
> were capable of doing any such thing.
>
> (Marx's idea, of course, is that the events like those in France are
> "political struggles, i.e., struggles of class against class," and
> that it is struggles of THAT KIND that account for radical
> social-structural changes, such as the transition from Feudalism to
> Capitalism. Strictly speaking, Marx had a much more complicated
> theory, which distinguished between the "immediate" cause -- class
> struggle -- and the cause "in the last analysis" -- the dialectic of
> forces and relations of production. But I don't think that these
> matters are relevant here).
>
> The question is: can we dispense with the concept of class struggle,
> even in our efforts to understand CURRENT EVENTS (e.g., the USA's
> "Contract with America", the French strikes, and so on)?
>
> Steve D.
> SoBlo
> Toronto
> (C.U.P.E. Local 3902!!!)
>
>
Yours etc.,
Karl