Foucault, Marx, Poulantzas

["Ricardo Duchesne" <rduchesn@xxxxxxxx>]

Leo:
> If I had to locate myself on the terrain of theories of power
> relations, I would define myself, following Laclau and Mouffe, as a
> post-Marxist, rather than a Marxist, precisely because I do not see
> power relations as an unified, closed field, defined by some primary,
> essential contradiction.

In my paper "Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst: The Origins of
Capitalism and the Origins of Post-Marxism" (Current Perspectives
in Social Theory, 2000) I contend that H&H's works, starting with
their 1975 *Precapitalist Modes of Production*, were the "first
daring efforts ones to push historical materialism in a
postmodernist direction".

The passage I sent from Laclau and Mouffe's *Hegemony* might
create the misleading impression - as this book in general did
among all Marxists - that L&M were advocating a totally contingent
view. The following passage clarifies their position: "The problem of
power cannot, therefore, be posed in terms of the search for *the*
class or *the* dominant sector which constitutes the centre of a
hegemonic formation, given that, by definition, such a centre will
always elude us. But it is equally wrong to propose as an
alternative, either pluralism or the total diffusion of power within the
social, as this would blind the analysis to the presence of nodal
points and to the partial concentrations of power existing in every
concrete social formation" (142).