![]() Taking for the moment the concept of disciplinary power, we can identify some fundamental points of convergence between Marx and Foucault in their otherwise distinct analyses of power. While Marx refers to economic processes in capitalism as the sole technology of power, Foucault identifies at least two political technologies of power, which he refers to as disciplinary power and bio-power. Its instrumentation, moreover, is highly specific, and cannot be captured by economic processes alone. It is not repressive, but incredibly productive. Perhaps most importantly for Foucault, power has positive effects. And wherever there is power there is always counter-power. Although like capital, power is distributed unevenly, it exists and is exercised throughout the social body. Furthermore, the logic of its distribution does not always imply the accumulation of capital. It is never “held” nor “owned” but is strategically exercised. For Foucault, power is not a resource, but a relation. Foucault’s critique of Marx certainly falls along these lines. Such critiques suggest that this focus came at the expense of recognizing the ways in which power is dispersed and exercised within the nooks and crannies of everyday life (rather than being concentrated and in limited supply). Power obscures “truth.” A counter-attack by the working class subject, which would reveal the “truth” that power hides from view, is only possible once the scales have been lifted from his eyes.Ĭritiques of Marx often point to his somewhat narrow focus on the State as the ultimate wielder of power. ![]() Power, for Marx, is negative, insofar as its effects are repressive (the loss of freedom). Ideas feed back into material reality, where they are implemented in everyday life as ideologies that lure the working class into a false consciousness, thereby ensuring their subordination. ![]() Although the origins of power are material, its effects are less so, since power (conceived as the control of economic processes) translates into the control over ideas. Its instrumentation is always captured by economic processes, and the logic of its distribution is the accumulation of capital (Marx, 1976). It is therefore concentrated among certain actors and groups – namely, the ruling class and the State – who wield it over an unsuspecting (proletariat) population. And as a resource, power is always in limited supply. Power, for Marx, was not a religious/philosophical/political dogma, but a resource. As Marx and Engels put it, “It has not occurred to any one of these philosophers to inquire into the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the relation of their criticism to their own material surroundings” (Marx & Engels, 1970, p. 41)) to address its relation to the material underpinnings of everyday life. Marx, whose historical materialism launched an attack on German idealism, attempted to bring power out of the sphere of ideas (where the German philosophers were always “fighting against phrases” (Marx & Engels, 1970, p. These assumptions color each of the topics that will be developed throughout the rest of the paper. ![]() What is Power?īefore delving into an analysis of power a la Marx and Foucault, I will first lay out the basic assumptions each makes about the fundamental nature of power. From this position, I think, we can identify ruptures, tensions, and connections that will help to give us a sense of the kind of relationship between Marx and Foucault, and their ideas about power. This paper, then, draws more heavily from Foucault’s words when he discusses Marx – whether explicitly in interviews or implicitly across his oeuvre – than from Marx himself. If the quotations included in the following pages feel somewhat unbalanced, it is because we cannot ask Marx directly what he would say about power, and about Foucault, while we can look directly to Foucault for answers. In this paper, I address the concept of power in terms of the ways it has been theorized by two of the world’s most influential thinkers: Karl Marx, who never developed an explicit theory of power, but whose work implicitly, constantly, addresses it, and Michel Foucault, whose work explicitly attends to the question of power, and whose theorization of it is possibly the most well-known and widely used today. For centuries, philosophers, cultural scholars, social scientists, political theorists, and others have been trying to capture the nature, function, and mechanisms of power that structure the dynamics of social life. Power relationships are the foundation of culture and society. ![]()
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