Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 15:21:17 +1000 (EST) From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au> Subject: Re: M-I: Foucault on USSR At 05:13 PM 1/29/97 -0500, you wrote: >In one of the mid-70s interviews collected in Power/Knowledge (p. 73), >Foucault says: > >"In Soviet society one has the example of a State apparatus which has >changed hands, yet leaves social hierarchies, family life, sexuality and >the body more or less as they were in capitalist society. Do you imagine >the mechanisms of power that operate between technicians, foremen and >workers are that much different here and in the Soviet Union?" > >Is this true? Doug, I have read the replies to this and I agree with most of what is said and I am no expert on the USSR, but this little take from Foucault irritates me in a similar way to the quote that Anthony posted from his Government textbook. And so here goes... 1. the body I know it is fashionable to go on about the body, but what precisely does "leave the body more or less as they were" mean or could mean? Presumably it means that Russia shares with the West the panopticon or everywhere-everywhen surveillance rather than the barbarous physical tortures of pre-capitalism(? ) Was the KGB any worse than the FBI/CIA/M15/ASIO/ETC? I doubt it, but presumably Foucault's point is that it was no better. I have no objections to this. 2.Progressivism - women >From 1928 onward the Soviet Union abandoned the moment of progressivism that you can see in the writings of Alexandra Kolontay esp "Communism and the Family" This is a very utopian text which attempts to prefigure a life for working class women free from the "four last duties" :- cleaning, washing, cooking and child rearing. Good on Alexandra I say. But by 1936 legal abortion was abolished, Motherhood was back in vogue and pink faced babies were everywhere. 3. Progressivism - education It is also instructive to take a look at Krupskaya and Lunacharsky's proposals for education. Until the Thermidor of 1928 Krupskaya was able to argue "Do we want to reproduce the old division of labour, do we want to make the workers narrow specialists who only know their own special job and are therefore permanently bound to it, or do we want to train specialists in the sense meant by Marx & Lenin?" And "The worker is not just somebody who carries out orders here. Today he carries out orders, tomorrow he can be an inventor, and the day after tomorrow and important organizer in a factory." 4. progressivism - sexuality As for the politics of sexuality, I have written about this before in the time of the Flame Wars, a long time ago, on a list far away, and am extremely reluctant to visit the topic again. But I will emphasis e that prior to 1928 the Soviet Union was attempting to articulate an extremely progressive position on homosexuality. Here the significant work was done by Grigorii Baktis, the director of the Moscow Institute of Social Hygiene. Baktis argued for tolerance but still regarded homosexuality as in some sense "wrong". Now no self respecting gay or queer activist of today would be grateful for Baktis. And neither should they be. But time and tide has made me a bit like Jon Flanders' preacher. In other words defeat after defeat and about 20 arrests have pushed me to the accommodation pole of the revolution-accommodation duality. In other words I know there are worse types out there than the Baktis's of this world, and I would not be surprised if we gays did not meet a few of them again. Whatever we think on this score after 1928 a different line came through and Soviet experts sniffed the wind and began talking about "social perils". Then in 1934 they started rounding up the faggots in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov and Odessa - to make the revolution safe of course. They were also arresting them at precisely the same time in Berlin - to make the revolution safe of course. In March 1934 homosexual acts were punished with terms of up to 8 years. The revolution was safe. Very safe. 5. What irritates me then, as I seem to agree with Foucault? A. Well it is that Foucault like most anarchists and dreamers of the absolute cannot see that these events took place as a response to the isolation of and attacks on the revolution by the west. It is part of the syndrome of "socialism failed" rather than "Socialism was defeated". Also for better or worse when the Bolsheviks seized power it was one of the great moments in human history. The dreams and hopes of thousands of progressivists looked like they could come to fruition. And I believe they would have if the German revolution had succeeded. But Foucault can never acknowledge pre-Thermidor Russia for that would mean endorsing Bolshevism. So anarchists and liberals and reactionaries and defenders of the post 28 Russian regime all share a common interest. They must deny the link between Bolshevism and progressivism. B. I am most annoyed about the power thing. Foucault is positively harmful here in his refusal to discriminate between that power which gets things done i.e. the process of human agency and the power which subjugates and oppresses and dominates. We can never abolish human agency. It truly is internal to us. But we can externalize oppression and subjugation and we can storm it from outside and we can abolish it. Why does Foucault insist that we cannot? Why does he drivel on about the micro structures of power? Well the answer lies in what happens to the Beautiful Souls in retreat from the defeats of the glorious moment of 68. They begin to articulate something which is a cross between scepticism - reality does not exist (i.e. we cannot change the world) and stoicism - there is nothing I can do about reality, might as well take care of the self. This often means asceticism, but in Foucault's case his predilections took a somewhat different form. regards Gary Sources for some of the above assertions:- Castles, S. & Wustenberg, The education of the future, London: Pluto Press, 1979 A. Kolontay, Communism and The Family, Sydney: CPA Publication, 1971 Lauritsen, J. & Thorstad, D., The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935) --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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