Marx, Weber and Foucault (Part Two)

I just finished working on two essays for my Modernist Political Theory class with Prof. James Ingram at the University of Oregon. This is the second half of the second essay, which explores the writings of Marx, Weber and Foucault in the critique of freedom and equality. The first half of the essay is here, while the previous essay parts can be found here and here.

So how do they all agree?

To show the point, look towards Marx’s arguments. In his most well-known work, Capital, Marx makes his case against capitalism in the name of the down-trodden proletariat injured by the elite classes. He rails against the injustices committed by the system.

“We suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, we are oppressed by a whole series of inherited evils, arising from the passive survival of archaic and outmoded modes of production, with their accompanying train of anachronistic social and political relations. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif!” (Marx, 218)

However, also note that he is not arguing against the idea of democracy, the form of political government, but rather against capitalism, an economic system based upon the ideal of democratic freedom. He does not want to subvert the rule of law, but rather expects capitalism to slide naturally and democratically into socialism. And he is not arguing against freedom, per se, but rather for equality.

His revolution is a bloodless one, and supported by the people. This distinction is an important one to make, and mirrored in the critiques of the other authors, because it serves to show how similar their underlying values are.

In analyzing Weber’s The Vocation Lectures, one sees an extensive argument in favor of two things: the role of science and religion in society, and increased legitimacy of political leaders. In doing so, Weber argues for a bureaucratization of politics, as seen in science and academia, and a offers a justification for elites as often existing due to inherent qualities such as competence and charisma, though he acknowledges systemic reasons as well.

“We can hear from that beautiful song of the Edomite watchman … in the book of Isaiah. “One calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? what of the night? [sic] The watchman said, Even if the morning cometh [sic], it is still night: if ye inquire already, ye will come again and inquire once more.” … From it we should draw the moral that longing and waiting is not enough and that we must act differently. We must go about our work and meet “the challenges of the day” –both in our human relations and our vocation. But that moral is simple and straightforward if each person finds and obeys the daemon that holds the threads of his life.” (Weber, 31)

In the above passage, Weber cites a biblical passage to his students in order to promote his idea of science and politics as being vocational in nature. And although the end result of this line of thought allows the divide between the common and the elite, it stems from a belief in freedom and fulfillment, rather than some advocacy of inequality or injustice. The bureaucracy is engendered in order to protect individual freedoms from a demagogue or tyrant, not limit them for the benefit of the leaders. Like Marx, Weber only hopes to use democracy to give the public more freedom and equality, but he is similarly caught up in the difficult relationship between the two ideas acting in on a broad scale.

Finally, in his previously-mentioned works Discipline and Punish and The Birth of the Prison, Foucault seems to attempt to avoid the problems experienced by Marx and Weber, and he tries to limit the focus of his book to those who have historically lacked both freedom and equality: the criminal, the soldier and the student.

Foucault describes the historical relationship between the criminal and the state, and clearly contrasts the brutality of early times with the relative humanity of contemporary forms of punishment and incarceration. He uses the example of the prison Panopticon as a jumping off point to explore a system that promotes that impersonal equality and blind justice that was so lacking in prisons, but also in schools and military barracks.

“The panoptic modality of power – at the elementary, technical, merely physical level at which it is situated – is not under the immediate dependence or a direct extension of the great juridico-political structures of a society.” (Foucault, 221)

“There is no risk, therefore, that the increase of power created by the panoptic machine may degenerate into tyranny; the disciplinary mechanism will be democratically controlled, since it will be constantly accessible ‘to the great tribunal committee of the world’.” (Foucault, 207)

Once again, it can be seen that this author really is a proponent of democracy, though he spends much of his book outlining plans to close the fist of control around the society. His plan is centered around leveraging the democratic society at large in order to prevent abuses and mini-tyrannies. From this perspective, the Panopticon concept is an equalizer: it restricts everyone in the same manner, to prevent a small number from being especially molested.

Now that each author has been examined, it is clear that their opinions can be seen as complementary, even if they seem to be in tension and opposition at first glance. For though they disagree in the details, in doing so they also affirm the broad principles that govern a democracy: the sovereign will of the people, the rule of law, the importance of individual freedoms and collective equalities.

While they would likely never agree on their separate concerns with modern democracy, it is safe to say that their disagreements have nothing to do with the idea of democracy itself, but rather with its symptoms.