Pastoral Power-- The Rise of Secular Salvation

As Michel Foucault begins his discussion with the relationship between rationalization and excessive power, he wanders away from an individual apparatus of power but moves on to talk about struggle. He describes a series of examples of opposition to traditional authority that he describes as transversal and puts them all into three categories: social, ethnic, and religious. He then goes on to discuss the root power form of this identity subjugation. Pastoral power, as he calls it, is the emphasis on forced conformity to one norm or another as a means of a sort of secular salvation. It is a distinctly different power model than the royal model in that it requires sacrifice of itself "for the life and salvation of the flock" (333). This new pastoral power sets state as a "modern matrix of individualization"(334). Its goal is to globalize and quantify the large population into a privilege of knowledge and then to analyse the individual by this "knowledge standard". What I think is somewhat ironic is that Foucault starts by speaking about rationalization and excessive power and then moves on to rationalize these new forms of power themselves. He sees them everywhere as there are numerous examples throughout his writing here and elsewhere. I see what he is describing but I also feel to some degree that identity needs to developed from somewhere and while he may describe the power of knowledge and its pastoral power application , I don't necessarily disagree with this power form.

The State on Power Relations

I think that it is very interesting that Foucault turns the question not centrally to the power of the state bu to already existing power structures that he sees. I also am intrigued by the idea that he began an in part rejection of simply seeing this power as repressive. To see the state merely as an apparatus for large power struggle relations between various sets is to see much more of what occurs in society. To view the state as a "codification of a whole number of power relations" (123) and to suggest that "revolution is a different kind of codification of the same relations" brings into light the more complex relation of the state to power. This manner of thinking allows the government to be a structure by which power relations fight to exert themselves while the state is no longer merely taking on the role of adversary but as conduit. I think this a far more accurate representation of state's role in the power relationship dialogue. It reminds me that in American, different political groups are often struggling with each other far more than with the state because if a long disenfranchised group finally takes some state power they often leave the state's authoritarian power intact. That is "one can perfectly well conceive of revolutions that leave essentially untouched the power relations that form the basis for the functioning of the state."

Critique of the Gotha Program

I think the Critique of the Gotha program is a particularly interesting reading from Karl Marx. To begin he is very witty in his assault against what he sees as a ideological pervasion and retrograde reforms contained in the Lassalle's contribution. The most interesting and powerful argument made is found on 325. In this section, Marx says that wages are not the value or price of labor but rather the price or value of labor power. That the bourgeoisie notion of wages are to give the worker "permission to work for his own subsistence", working free for a certain time for the capitalist and that this whole capitalist structure is based on extending free work through developing productivity or lengthening the work day is the basis by which Marx calls the system slavery. Basically it is working without ever really gaining access to the means of production rather than a small slice of the surplus distribution of profit. Those with ownership of land and capital gain do not have to work because they can ride on the profit that they derive from owning the means of production and the income of the power of others' labor.

Historical, Cyclical Revolution

What I find interesting above communism itself is Marx's historical interpretation of economics and class. There is a great sense of irony that comes from the change from feudalism to capitalism to communism. Marx describes a defection from a number of the nobility into the bourgeoisie at the end of feudalism and he lays a cyclical pattern of bourgeoisie ideologists who defect to the proletariat(167). Ironically Marx states that, "the weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself". (164) I think his analysis of history is interestingly valid but is also lacking the detail that would prevent it from being too subjectively generalized. Marxian analysis remains valid today though because his words from over 150 years ago seem to accurately describe the adverse affects of unrestrained capitalism through industrialism and globalization. It may be argued that his views projected into the future of communist triumphs are far less valid then his historical analysis. It still lays an important way of examining historical economic problems that continue today but his view of change suffers from ideological rigidity.