José Guilherme Merquior’s Verdict on Foucault’s Thought

The following observations are from José Guilherme Merquior’s book Foucault (London; 2nd edn. 1991). Despite the fact that Merquior was a neoliberal, I highly recommend this book as a critical overview of Foucault’s work.

There are lots of things that can be said, but let us start with politics. What can be said of Foucault’s politics? There is no doubt that Foucault thought of himself as a radical leftist, and that his early Marxism (which he later repudiated) left its mark on him, such as in a certain type of Marxist class analysis and his use of the word “bourgeois” as a term of abuse for everything he hated (to see this, one need only read Foucault’s debate with Chomsky in which Foucault’s comments are shot through with what I regard as vulgar Marxist class analysis). As to Foucault’s mature political views, Merquior (1991: 154) regards Foucault as a libertarian or left anarchist who distrusted all institutions, and who was in some respects a trailblazing advocate of identity politics and minority cultures (Merquior 1991: 155), and so had something in common with Frankfurt school cultural Marxism. Yet Foucault was no utopian, and was firmly anti-utopian in his thinking (Merquior 1991: 155). As a neo-anarchist, Foucault distrusted all power but went to ludicrous extremes in thinking that all dominant culture or even truth is just a product of power systems – and it was this that crippled his own critique of power (Merquior 1991: 156). Anyone on the Left who defends objective truth and is suspicious of Marxism (I am one of them) can readily agree with Merquior’s assessment here.

Foucault’s view of “justice” was nothing but a sick joke: in 1972 in a debate with Maoists (on which, see Miller 2000: 203–206) he suggested that the murderous 1792 September massacres and mob lynchings (often of innocent people) of the French revolution were an instance of authentic popular justice (Foucault 1980), and rejected courts (even socialist ones) as “bourgeois” institutions and a “deformation” of popular justice (Foucault 1980: 2; Merquior 1991: 155). Once again, any reasonable person (and not just on the Left) should rightly shun any notion of justice that adores random mob violence and the murder of innocent people. Foucault’s ideas on justice are just a perversion of that very concept.

To return to an earlier point, Merquior (1991: 143) saw Foucault as the outstanding representative of neo-Nietzschean thought in the late 20th century, albeit in rather original ways. Nietzschean irrationalism was a central element of Foucault’s thought, as was his denial of objective truth. In contrast to Nietzsche, however, Foucault had contempt for the Enlightenment (Merquior 1991: 145). Now French Structuralism had already attacked the Enlightenment, and Foucault continued this onslaught (Merquior 1991: 157).

The central element of Foucault’s attack on the Enlightenment was his rejection of objective truth, and the claim that all truths are created by power systems. This is the most damning part of Foucault’s philosophy. Foucault refused to accept objective truths, but claimed he wrote historical works.

But there is a deep contradiction here. One cannot deny objective truth – as Foucault did – and claim to be doing history that aims at true statements about the past and in which one invokes and cites – again as Foucault did! – historical documents and evidence as if they support one’s statements and theories. Objective truth is presupposed in the very essence of Foucault’s historical works, in the attempt to assert true propositions about the past and Western civilisation, whether about epistemes, archives, madness, prisons, power or sexuality. When you consider this paradox, Foucault’s whole project and works explode before your very eyes.

And, even if you want to treat Foucault as a serious historian who aimed at truth, as it happens, judged by the standards of evidence and objective truth that non-Postmodernist historians demand, most of Foucault’s historical work cannot be taken seriously anyway and fails on many levels (Merquior 1991: 143), even if you put aside the terrible contradiction arising from his denial of objective truth.

Roger Scruton’s cutting judgement on Postmodernist truth relativism and Derrida’s deconstruction can apply just as well to Foucault’s pretentious and ridiculous “genealogical” philosophy and historical writing:

“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.” (Scruton 1996: 6).

“[sc. given its espousal of truth relativism, Derrida’s] Deconstruction deconstructs itself, and disappears up its own behind, leaving only a disembodied smile and a faint smell of sulphur.” (Scruton 1996: 478–479).

Again, I think any reasonable person on the Left who thinks seriously about the consequences of denying objective truth can strongly agree with his assessment – and it applies not just to Foucault but to the whole Postmodernist movement Foucault helped to create.

In the next post, I want to look at Foucault’s famous 1971 debate on Dutch television with Noam Chomsky. So I will leave you with the video of this debate below (you will probably have to turn on the English subtitles).



Links
Gutting, Gary. 2003 (rev. 2013). “Michel Foucault,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/

“Human Nature: Justice versus Power. Noam Chomsky debates with Michel Foucault,” 1971
http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm

Kelly, Mark. “Michel Foucault (1926–1984),” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.iep.utm.edu/foucault/

“Michel Foucault,” Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Foucault, Michel. 1980. “On Popular Justice: A Discussion with Maoists,” in C. Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Random House, New York. 1–36.

Merquior, José Guilherme. 1991. Foucault (2nd edn.). Fontana, London.

Miller, James. 2000. The Passion of Michel Foucault. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Scruton, R. 1996. Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey. Penguin Books, London.

Piero Sraffa’s Damning Verdict on the Labour Theory of Value

Kurz (2002: 184) notes the debates and confusion over whether Piero Sraffa accepted the classical or Marxist labour theory of value and used it as a starting point for his theories.

Kurz (2002: 184–185) and Kurz and Salvadori (2010) prove that this is not the case, even if some Post Keynesians sympathetic to Marxism argue that Sraffa showed how to determine the rate of profit independently of prices as a share of a particular composite commodity (akin to Smith’s idea of labour commanded).

But with respect to the classical and orthodox Marxist labour theory of value, Sraffa in fact thought that it was a “corruption” of an earlier and better “physical real cost theory” (Kurz 2002: 185).

In an unpublished note of 1928, Sraffa gave his damning verdict on the labour theory of value:

“There appears to be no objective difference between the labour of a wage earner and that of a slave; of a slave and of a horse; of a horse and of a machine, of a machine and of an element of nature (?this does not eat). It is a purely mystical conception that attributes to human labour a special gift of determining value. Does the capitalist entrepreneur, who is the real ‘subject’ of valuation and exchange, make a great difference whether he employs men or animals? Does the slave-owner?” (Sraffa, unpublished note, D3/12/9: 89, quoted in Kurz and Salvadori 2010: 199).

Bravo, Piero. Michał Kalecki had a similarly negative view and rejected the labour theory as utterly metaphysical. So did Joan Robinson, whose rejection of it was scathing (Robinson 1964: 28–46).

The point Sraffa made is a profound one too. Why should human labour have a special status when animal labour has been – and in some countries still is – a fundamental factor of production? (as a kind of special category of capital good). What about natural forces like winds driving windmills? All these things produce labour power too, and if Marx’s abstract socially-necessary labour time (SNLT) units were meaningful measures of every type of heterogeneous, concrete human labour, then the labour power done by animals or nature ought to be measurable in terms of SNLT units too.

So why is human labour the sole source of value? Why not animal labour time too, but translated into abstract SNLT? Why not wind power translated into abstract SNLT?

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kurz, Heinz D. 2002. “Sraffa’s Contributions to Economics. Some Notes on his unpublished Papers,” in Sergio Nistico and Domenico Tosato (eds.), Competing Economic Theories. Essays in Memory of Giovanni Caravale. Routledge, London. 177–195.

Kurz, Heinz D. and Neri Salvadori. 2010. “Sraffa and the Labour Theory of Value: A Few Observations,” in John Vint et al. (eds.), Economic Theory and Economic Thought: Essays in Honour of Ian Steedman. Routledge, London and New York. 189–215.

Robinson, Joan. 1964. Economic Philosophy. Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Vernengo, Matias. 2012. “Sraffa and Marxism or the Labor Theory of Value, what is it good for?,” Naked Keynesianism, August 14
http://nakedkeynesianism.blogspot.com/2012/08/sraffa-and-marxism-or-labor-theory-of.html