POULANTZAS AND FOUCAULT ON POWER AND STRATEGY Bob Jessop After the May events in 1968, many French

intellectuals proclaimed a 'crisis of Marxism'.1 The first such crisis was declared by Masaryk at the end of the nineteenth century and other crises have been announced regularly ever since. But the post-68 crisis appeared more serious and many doubted that it could be resolved through a simple revival or revision of traditional Marxism. Indeed, May 1968 triggered a strong theoretical reaction against Marxism in both its orthodox and structuralist forms (Ferry and Renaut 1985). Its most extreme expression was the virulently anti-Marxist, postgauchiste, post-modern, nouvelle philosophie (Dews 1979; Resch 1992). More temperate were the attempts to rescue Marxism from its alleged over-identification with orthodox Communism and Stalinism by drawing on other theories. These were existentialism, structuralism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, theories of language, and the work of Michel Foucault (Poster 1984: 20-40; for Foucaults reflections on May 1968 for the changing intellectual climate, see 1983a [Ethics: 125], DE2 1348; 1984c [Ethics: 115], DE2 1414). Foucault, who had already left the PCF in 1953 after three years inactive membership and later rejected official Marxism as simplistic and partisan (Macey 1993: 40; Sheridan 1980: 5), took a different route, claiming that the May events had enabled him to sharpen questions he had already been posing and had also given them a new political significance (Foucault 1977a: 142). Thus he first turned his attention to issues of rupture and discontinuity, power-knowledge and resistance, then to governmentality and state strategy, and, later still, to the self. He also began to display a more positive but still ambivalent relationship to Marxism. On the one hand, he continued to criticize a wide range of Marxist positions that he deemed to be theoretically inadequate and/or politically unacceptable. These included vulgar Marxism; academic (or university) Marxism; endless commentaries on surplus-value; intense interest in the nature of class and neglect of the subjects, stakes, and modalities of class struggle; its concern with consciousness and ideology rather than the materiality of the body and anatomo-

politics; epiphenomenal analyses of infrastructure and superstructure relations; the sterilizing constraints of the dialectic and the logic of contradiction; para-Marxism; Freudo-Marxism; Marxist hagiography; the hypermarxification of social and political analyses; and communistology.2 On the other hand, Foucault maintained a sort of "uninterrupted dialogue" with Marx, [who] was in fact not unaware of the question of power and its disciplines (Fontana and Bertani 2003: 277). Thus it is not hard to find increasingly sympathetic but generally covert references to some core themes in Marxs own work, some of them deliberately and provocatively undeclared, and to some more sophisticated currents in contemporary Marxism (Poulantzas EPS: 74; Balibar 1992; Lemke 2003). These different reactions to the alleged crisis of Marxism provide a good basis for comparing Michel Foucault and Nicos Poulantzas. For, while Poulantzas also reoriented his theoretical and political analyses in several steps after May 1968, he never abandoned his fundamental commitment to Marxism. Nonetheless, like others at the time, in seeking to reinvigorate Marxism, he recommended resort to other disciplines and approaches. These included linguistics, psychoanalysis, and the work of Foucault (see Poulantzas 1979a: 14-5; 1979b; 1979c). But he largely ignored psychoanalysis, paid limited attention to linguistics, and took only Foucault seriously. Even then he distinguished Foucault as an epistemologist and general theorist from Foucault as an analyst of specific techniques of power and aspects of the state form. For, while Poulantzas rejected Foucaults general epistemological and theoretical project, he found his critique of discipline, power, and knowledge useful (citing both SP and VS with qualified approval in his own magnum opus, Ltat, le Pouvoir, le Socialisme (SPS: 6668, 69; EPS: 73-5, 76, 298n). This rejection makes sense on both counts. On the one hand, Foucaults epistemology is incompatible with Marxism (see Lecourt 1972); and, more particularly, he had dismissed Marxian political economy as part of the Classical episteme and even accorded Ricardo greater weight than Marx in this regard (Foucault 1969: 268-71). Moreover, while Foucault had rejected the temptations of state theory as one would refuse an invitation to an indigestible meal (Foucault 1979b),3 Poulantzas aimed to develop an autonomous Marxist political science within the framework of

historical materialism and eventually claimed to have completed Marxs unfinished theory of the state (1978b). On the other hand, Poulantzas recognized that this work of completion needed to go beyond his own initial Althusserian and Gramscian perspectives and to develop a more general, and resolutely relational, account of power. Despite their very different philosophical approaches and theoretical trajectories, there are some fascinating parallels between the two thinkers. These are most obvious during the ten years following May 1968, when Foucault and Poulantzas both moved beyond their respective earlier theoretical approaches and focused increasingly, each in his own distinctive way, on the complexities of power, resistance, and their strategic codification in the modern world. Indeed, the confused political and theoretical conjuncture of 19721977 was an especially creative period for both thinkers (on Foucault, see Gordon 1980: ix). Thus my contribution will explore the convergences, divergences, hidden parallels, and shared problems in the work of Foucault and Poulantzas on power and strategy. Poulantzas and Foucault Whereas Foucaults work still generates debate, interest in Poulantzass work diminished rapidly after his death. This neglect illustrates the contemporary crisis of Marxism and deserves to be remedied. Thus I will first comment briefly on Poulantzas. He was a Greek political and social theorist who taught in Paris and was active in French as well as Greek intellectual and political life. He initially worked within a Western Marxist framework and was strongly interested in the state and state power in advanced capitalist societies. His principal theoretical influences were French philosophy (Sartre, Althusser, and, later, Foucault), Italian political theory (Gramsci and, later, the left Eurocommunism associated with Ingrao), and bourgeois constitutional theory (and its Marxist critique). His key theoretical contribution came in the 1970s with his development of the argument that state power is a social relation that is reproduced in and through the interaction between the changing institutional form of the state and

the changing character of political class forces. Accordingly, he increasingly emphasized the nature of the state as a system of structurally-inscribed strategic selectivity and the nature of political struggle as a field of competing strategies for hegemony. In both respects he argued that power should be studied in terms of the changing balance of class forces mobilized behind specific strategies in various political conjunctures (for a detailed account, Jessop 1985). In addition to his overriding concern with the state as the strategic terrain in, on, and through which political class domination is secured, Poulantzas also considered its role in providing certain key conditions for capital accumulation and in reproducing the capitalist form of the mental-manual division of labour. His last major work, EPS (1978), extended these accounts to include the state's role in organizing the social body (its territoriality, its temporal organization, its cultural life) and the individual body (through violence, law, citizenship, language, health-care, etc.). Poulantzass indebtedness to Foucault's analyses is especially clear here but there are also other, less visible Foucauldian influences within his overall account of the state and its position in contemporary social formations (see below). Foucaults own work on power emerged in initially unacknowledged ways. He sometimes claimed in interviews that an implicit interest in power informed his archaeological studies, began to surface with his genealogical studies, and gained full expression with Surveiller et Punir (1975a) and la Volont de Savoir (1976a). It is these two books that most influenced Poulantzas. Foucault stressed three major themes in his self-described nominalist analytics of power in this third period: the immanence of power in all social relations, its articulation with discourses as well as institutions, and its polyvalence (in the sense that its impact and significance depend on how these relations and their associated discourses and institutions are integrated into different strategies). In this context he also focused on technologies of power, the relations between power and knowledge, and diverse strategies for the structuring and deployment of power relations. In developing this analytical approach, Foucault rejected any attempt to develop a general theory of power that rested on assumptions about its essential unity, its pre-given functions, or its global strategic deployment by a master subject. Instead, its study should begin from below, in the heterogeneous and dispersed

microphysics of power, to explore specific forms of exercise of power in different institutional sites and to investigate how, if at all, these were articulated to produce broader and more persistent societal configurations. Foucault typically rejected any a priori assumption that different forms of power were linked together to produce an overall pattern of class domination. This is consistent with his more general rejection of attempts to provide a total or totalizing interpretation of social events. This holds especially for the emergence (or genealogy) of various technologies of power and disciplinary techniques but Foucault also recognized that the selection of some technologies and practices rather than others and their subsequent retention are more likely to be linked to broader strategies of state and/or class power.4 Thus he noted that the disciplinary techniques of the modern state originated in dispersed local sites well away from the centres of state power in the Ancien Rgime and that they were only later taken up and integrated into a coherent global strategy of bourgeois domination (SP, VS). Nonetheless such strategic codification and/or structural coherence are by no means guaranteed for different techniques can also be disjointed and contradictory. This said, whereas Surveiller et Punir was more concerned with the dispersion of the mechanisms of power, Volont de Savoir began to explore how different mechanisms were articulated to produce social order. This interest in the macrophysics of power is even more evident in Foucault's three courses at the Collge de France entitled Society must defend itself (1976), Security, Territory, and Population (1978), and The Birth of Biopolitics (1979). The second and third volumes of the Histoire de Sexualit (1984a, 1984b) marked a further shift, however, to the emergence of the sexual subject and the formation of the self and self-identity more generally. Mechanisms of power were given less prominence and more weight was given to ethical discourse about the self. My analytical strategy is to consider the relations between the work of Poulantzas and Foucault and distinguish their positions in what is largely a shared approach to social and political order. I will take the arguments of Poulantzas as my main reference point for two reasons. First, despite frequent attempts to counterpose Marxist and

Foucauldian approaches to power and strategy and the occasional use of Poulantzas as a proxy for Marxism in this regard, Poulantzas was far less of an orthodox 'Marxist' and far more 'Foucauldian' than many of his critics suggest. And, second, if this is the case, it is because he consciously related his work to that of Foucault both positively and negatively. Thus he not only appropriated some of Foucault's concepts and arguments but also distinguished his own theory and its political implications from Foucault's more general approach. However, because he is not always the best guide to his own relation to Foucault, I will also qualify Poulantzass account, revisit Foucault's approach, and comment on the individual and shared limitations of both approaches. We can relate Poulantzas and Foucault in four main ways. First, there are Poulantzas's direct and explicit borrowings from Foucault and his colleagues. This was largely a oneway traffic, however, since Foucault himself never, as far as I know, referred to Poulantzass work.5 Second, there are marked similarities and even unstated bilateral convergences. For, having rejected vulgar Marxism and Freudo-Marxism in the 1960s, Foucault grew more sympathetic towards Marxist analyses in the 1970s. Indeed, he claimed that one could not write history without using a whole range of concepts directly or indirectly related to Marx's thought and situating oneself on an intellectual terrain defined by Marx (1975c [P/K: 53]; DE1: 1621). Third, despite these unilateral borrowings and shared positions, Poulantzas also directed some trenchant criticisms at Foucault. These helped him differentiate his position theoretically and politically in relation to the current intellectual mood in France. Interestingly, Foucault later modified his own position along parallel lines although this owed more to his own disjunctive theoretical development than to Poulantzass criticisms. And, fourth, despite these clearly stated differences, there are also hidden parallels in their respective accounts of power and the state. Exploring these will help us understand some key limitations to both thinkers approaches to power and strategy. Some Unilateral Borrowings Poulantzas's key contributions to Marxist theory concern the state, state power, classes,

and class struggle and his position on these issues remained resolutely Marxist in its general orientation (see Jessop 1985). But he also discussed ideology, the role of intellectuals, and the mental-manual division of labour. Poulantzas borrowed from Foucault or, at least, moved towards his positions in all three of these areas. Regarding the ideological domain, Poulantzas drew directly on Foucault's distinction between 'specific' and 'universal' intellectuals and, more significantly, on his discussion of 'power' and 'knowledge'. 'Specific' intellectuals are experts in particular disciplines relevant to specific areas of social life; 'universal' intellectuals are dilettantes whose influence depends on their general literary or intellectual position (Foucault 1977a [PK: 126-33]; DE2: 154-160). Poulantzas used this distinction to criticize the role of intellectuals in Greek and French politics and to urge a more active role for specific intellectuals. More generally, Foucault related the role of intellectuals to the relations between power and knowledge. He argued that 'there is no relation of power without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, no knowledge which does not presuppose and constitute at the same time relations of power' (DP: 32; SP: 00). Poulantzas extended this analysis by linking it to the capitalist division between mental and manual labour and also notes that Marx developed similar ideas about this link in his work on production and political domination (SPS: 55, 89-90; EPS: 60, 98-99). Indeed he even suggested that the capitalist state is the institutional embodiment par excellence of intellectual labour separated from manual labour. Turning to broader issues, on the state as such, Poulantzas used Foucault's ideas on disciplinary techniques, normalization, and panopticism as well as his views on 'anatomo-politics' and the recomposition of the body politic (SPS: 66-67, 69-70, 75, 81; EPS: 72-73, 76, 82, 88). He also endorsed Foucault's account of new social movements as a response to the growth of disciplinary techniques. Even when directly borrowing from Foucault's work, Poulantzas typically modified it. This can be seen in his interpretation of the relation between 'power' and 'knowledge', his account of disciplines and normalization, and his discussion of the political constitution of corporality, and his continual references to parallel, if not superior, ideas in the work of Marx himself. This process of insertion-modification was made easier by

the convergences that had developed between their arguments and analyses. These provided points of articulation and enabled Poulantzas to draw on Foucault's work without falling into simple eclecticism. Eight Shared Positions or Bilateral Convergences There are eight main areas where Poulantzas and Foucault developed similar arguments. First, they both had long-standing interests in the nature and mechanisms of individualization. Both denied the existence of originating subjects and both examined the mechanisms in and through which acting and knowing subjects were constituted. This is particularly clear in Poulantzas's early analysis of the juridico-political production of the 'isolation effect' (i.e., the experience of class relations as relations among so many formally equal individuals with competing private interests) and its role in shaping struggles over political hegemony around competing definitions of the national-popular interest. This recognizes the productive as well as coercive nature of the juridicopolitical and its contribution to the political disorganization of the subordinate classes. Foucault did not start out from the existence of classes defined by the relations of production, of course, but he was also strongly interested in the nature and mechanisms of individualization and normalization and their role in shaping bodies as well as minds in different historical periods and different sites of power. These studies had a significant impact on Poulantzass later work and, indeed, he willingly conceded that Foucault's analyses of normalization and the state's role in shaping corporality were better than his own account of the 'isolation effect' (SPS: 70; EPS: 76). Second, related to this was the shared analysis of the relationship between sovereignty and individual citizenship. Poulantzas rooted the specificity of the capitalist type of state in the constitutive (defining) absence of a formal monopoly of power for the economically dominant class over the dominated classes. For the normal capitalist state had the distinctive juridico-political form of a unified, centralized, sovereign apparatus that exercised constitutionalized authority over its individual citizen-subjects (PPSC: 132-134, 188-189, 275-277; PPCS-I: 139-140; PPCS-II: 102-103). This was the

institutional matrix within which different social forces struggled to develop specific state and hegemonic projects that could secure social cohesion in a class-divided society (PPSC: 140-141, 188-193, 214-215, 274-279; PPCS-I: 147-148; PPCS-II: 7-11, 35-37, 102-107). This matrix involved not only the repressive state apparatus but also a plurality of ideological state apparatuses (ISAs) located both within and beyond the states formal, juridico-political boundaries. These ISAs included education, trade unions, the mass media, the family, and a wide range of institutions connected with the welfare state (FD: 195-196, 299-309; CCC: 24-25, 27-28, 30-32; CSC: 28-29; 31-36; SPS: 28-34; EPS: 31-38; cf. Althusser 1995: 107-109). Foucault likewise came to argue that modern society, from the nineteenth century up to our own day, has been characterized on the one hand, by a legislation, a discourse, an organization based on public right, whose principle of articulation is the social body and the delegative status of each citizen; and, on the other hand, by a closely linked grid of disciplinary coercions whose purpose is in fact to assure the cohesion of this same social body (1976b [P/K: 106]; DE2: 187-188). Third, both theorists adopted a relational approach to power and explored the links between power and strategies. Poulantzas was ahead of Foucault here too but he later incorporated Foucauldian ideas into his own analysis whilst retaining, contrary to Foucault, an emphasis on the class nature of the state. Pouvoir Politique et Classes Sociales treated power as the capacity to realize class interests in a specific conjuncture and defined such interests in terms of the changing range of feasible class objectives. He denied that the state could wield power in its own right and stressed that state power was a specific, institutionally mediated expression of class power. Moreover, even in PPSC, Poulantzas argued that class interests could not be derived in a priori fashion from the position of class agents in the relations of production. They could only be established in terms of the isolation effect and class strategies. He emphasized that power is not a fixed quantum that can only be allocated in a zero-sum manner so that losses and gains cancel each other out. He also identified many potential disjunctions between economic, political, and ideological capacities, interests, and actual power relations. His later work examined the complex links between class

interests, class power, and class strategies (for more detailed discussion, see Jessop 1985: 340-343). The relational approach to power is especially clear in EPS, in which Poulantzas provides his most elaborate argument that the state itself is a social relation. It is not a subject that acquires power for itself by depriving classes of power; nor is it an instrumental depository of the power held by a dominant class subject located beyond it (SPS: 146-8; EPS: 160-162). Instead it should be understood as the material condensation of the balance of class forces in struggle. In this context, Poulantzas also reinforced his earlier arguments (dating from PPSC) that local class struggles and issue-oriented social movements operating at a distance from the state may have significant pertinent effects from the bottom up on the exercise of state power. Fourth, Poulantzas and Foucault both insisted that power is always correlated with resistance. Poulantzas initially made this claim in terms of the antagonistic character of the social relations of production in class-divided societies and the resulting struggles over economic exploitation and political and ideological class domination. He later coquetted with Foucauldian language to extend this claim. For example, Foucault argued that, 'where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power' (HS1: 95).6 In this sense power and resistance are coeval: power always engenders resistance, resistance always elicits counter-resistance. Likewise Poulantzas argued that 'there are no social classes prior to their opposition in struggle: they are not posed "in themselves" in the relations of production only to enter into struggle (become classes "for themselves") afterwards and elsewhere' (SPS: 27; cf. 45, 141, 145). Il nexiste pas de classes sociales pralables leur opposition, cest dire leurs luttes. Les classes sociales ne sont pas poses en soi dans les rapports de production, pour entrer en lutte (classes pour soi) seulement aprs ou ailleurs (EPS: 30; cf. 50, 155, 159). Hence class struggle is never in a position of exteriority to class relations: they are coeval. Fifth, Poulantzas and Foucault concurred in treating power as productive and positive rather than simply repressive and negative. This is another area where Poulantzas seems to have anticipated Foucault. For the latter only rejected the Nietzschean

hypothesis that power is repressive in the mid-1970s. Foucault then seems to have rejected all accounts of power that treated it as purely repressive, censorious, and negative and emphasized instead its productive, normalizing, and positive functions (DP: 23-8, 209-16, 296-306; HS1: 5-10, 41-8, 82-9, 97, 136, 144; 1976b [PK: 88-96, 102-8]; DE2: 169-174; 183-189; 1977a [P/K: 119-23]; DE2: 148-151; 1977e [P/K: 140]; DE2 423-4). Poulantzas had already treated power in these terms for several years before Foucaults conversion. Indeed in treating the state as the factor of social cohesion in a class-divided society, he clearly emphasized its productive role rather than the Marxist-Leninist idea that it comprises 'special bodies of armed men, prisons, etc.' (Lenin 1917: 292). Poulantzas later paid even more attention to the state's positive role in reproducing relations of production, organizing material concessions, unifying the power bloc, assigning a specific class-pertinence to non-class relations, producing knowledge, shaping the spatio-temporal matrix of capitalist societies, and so forth. Foucault also rejected those liberal and Marxist approaches to power that assimilated it to the commodity and/or suggested that it is always subordinate to economic imperatives. Similarly Poulantzas was always concerned with the state's role in securing political class domination. He had long criticized the 'changiste' approach of some Italian Marxists (who derived the necessity of the state from its functions in commodity circulation); and he also criticized 'capital logic' approaches that derived the state form and activities from its overall economic functionality. In short, even before he was directly influenced by Foucault's analyses of the techniques of power, Poulantzas avoided the serious faults that Foucault claimed to find in other analyses of power. A sixth convergence concerns the close links between power and knowledge. This is evident from Poulantzas's dual appropriation of Gramscis analyses of hegemony and Althussers views on ideological state apparatuses, and, more importantly here, can also be seen in his own accounts of the role of the mental-manual division of labour in reproducing political and ideological class domination. Thus CCC interprets this division as a concentrated expression of the coupling of political and ideological relations to the relations of production (1974: 233, 240; CSC: 248-9, 255-6). It is directly linked to the 'secrecy of knowledge' and excludes the working class (and the more 'proletarianized'

layers of the new petty bourgeoisie) from the centres of bourgeois power (1974: 31, 180, 237, 249, 255, 274-5, 322-3; CSC: 35, 194-195, 252-3, 265, 271, 292-3, 345-6). Poulantzas also suggested that basic research, technology, management, and bureaucratic organization are always closely interwoven with the dominant ideology and added that this involves specific material practices of ideological domination as well as ideas (1974: 181, 236-8, 240, 255, 258; CSC: 195, 251-4, 255, 271, 274-5). Foucault is especially well known, of course, for his explorations of the power-knowledge couplet in the 1970s. Seventh, both theorists noted the continuity between liberal democracy and fascist and Stalinist forms of totalitarianism. Both stressed the common matrix of statehood, the social construction and variability of the public-private distinction, the individualization of political subjects, and the role of nationalism in the modern state institutional factors that shaped both political struggles in liberal democracies and in the totalitarian state (FD 1970: 320-324; SPS: 72-74; EPS 79-81; Foucault Interviews). We should also note that Foucault claimed that the nonanalysis of fascism is one of the most important political facts of the last thirty years and that Poulantzas had made a special study of the historical specificity of fascism following the Greek coup dtat in 1967 and claims about the creeping fascisation of the French state after 1968 (Foucault 1977e [P/K: 139]; DE2 422; Poulantzas 1970). Poulantzas was also critical of Stalinism as a political current from an early stage in his political development and, in later analyses of state socialism, criticized the totalitarian nature of the Soviet state and the failings of the command economy (SPS: 251-256; EPS: 277-283). Likewise, during the late 1970s, both thinkers examined the restructuring of the postwar welfare state, new authoritarian tendencies, and the rise of neo-liberalism (Foucault 1977a; Poulantzas EPS: 179-222). Eighth, Poulantzas and Foucault both became interested in 'micro-revolts', rank-and-file movements, and what Poulantzas termed struggles at a distance from the state. Poulantzas's interest was stimulated by the role of popular movements in the decomposition and collapse of the military dictatorships in Southern Europe in the 1970s and was reinforced by the growing politicization of branches of the state

apparatus in France in the same period as its personnel struggled in and against the state (notably the police, magistracy, and lawyers) (CD: passim; 1976: passim). Foucault's interest in micro-revolts was stimulated by the proliferation of protest movements outside the workplace in the aftermath of May 1968 and he was notably involved in the prison reform movement, women's liberation, the struggle for gay rights, and the anti-psychiatry movement. Moreover, while Poulantzas criticized Foucault for insisting that micro-revolts could only succeed if they remained dispersed and uncoordinated, Foucault later accepted that different forms of resistance would need to be readjusted, reinforced, and transformed by global strategies of societal transformation (HS1: 96; 1977b [PK: 159]; DE2 201-2; 1977c [P/K: 203]; DE2 306-7; PTS: 60). Thus both thinkers came to stress the need for a complex but coherent strategy towards new social movements. 3. Eight Criticisms of Foucault and Some Possible Responses Poulantzas and Foucault were by no means in full agreement. This can be seen in Poulantzass explicit criticisms of Foucault in occasional incidental remarks and some detailed comments. This is most striking in the criticisms developed in areas where the above-noted convergences occurred. In contrast, Foucault made no direct references to Poulantzas's work or, indeed, to other contemporary Marxists, since he preferred general problematization to detailed critique.7 This is reflected in regular attacks on vulgar Marxism for its economism, its claim to have identified the origin of power in the economy and/or class relations, and its view of the state as a sovereign political subject that possessed and wielded a definite quantum of power from the top down (SP and VS). He also attacked Marxisms more general claims to scientificity at the expense of alternative forms of knowledge (e.g., 1976b [P/K: 85-89]; DE2: 166-170). But his later work also involves some interesting, if generally unacknowledged and perhaps unintentional, convergences toward more sophisticated Marxist positions, including Gramsci and Poulantzas. I now present a synopsis of Poulantzas's criticisms, arranged in terms of seven of the

above-noted convergences between their positions. This approach abandons Poulantzas's own fragmented order of presentation and also neglects Foucault's positive contributions. But it should facilitate the subsequent argument. Before proceeding, however, we should note that Poulantzas criticized the analytics of power developed in Surveiller et Punir and Volont de Savoir, which were published three and two years respectively before ltat, le Pouvoir, le Socialisme (1978). Poulantzas did not (or could not) take account of the lectures at the Collge de France (1976-79) in which Foucault turned his attention to governmentality. These are especially interesting because several lectures contain Foucaults self-criticism for committing some of the errors that Poulantzas identified in the two earlier texts (and for others that Poulantzas did not identify). It would be very risky, if only for reasons of timing, to assume that Foucault was responding to Poulantzass criticisms here.8 It is enough to note that these self-criticisms and corrections occurred and led to greater convergence between their respective positions than either thinker might have suspected. First, Poulantzas criticized Foucault for relating the form of the modern state to its role in individualizing the social and political body over which it exercised power. This meant, according to Poulantzas, that Foucault ignored the state's real foundations in capitalist relations of production and the class struggle. These foundations provided the key element, of course, in Poulantzas's own account of the capitalist type of state (SPS: 75; EPS: 82). Foucault would probably have responded that his earlier work had been mainly concerned with the disciplinary normalization of the conduct of persons who were not directly involved in capitalist production (e.g., asylums, prisons, schools, barracks); that he had noted how the disciplinary techniques first developed in this context were later deployed in factories to control the division of labour; that a key aspect of the new anatomo-politics was to bind men to the productive apparatus and facilitate a capitalist political economy of time based on abstract labour;9 and that the rise of the modern state was certainly bound up with the problem of population in its relation to territory and wealth as reflected in the new science of political economy (cf. Foucault, 1977b [P/K: 161]; DE2 203-4; 1978b [F/E: 217-219]; DE2: 652-655)

Second, Poulantzas identified important differences on the question of power. He criticized Foucault for arguing that power has no bases beyond the power relation itself and therefore consists purely in the modalities of its exercise. He also criticized Foucault and his followers for emphasizing the dispersion of powers at the expense of their codification and condensation in and through the state. He insisted that class domination is not inherent in the power relation as such but has precise bases in economic exploitation, in the place of different classes in the various power apparatuses and mechanisms outside the state, and in the state system itself. This means, according to Poulantzas, that class power is determined in the first instance by the contrasting positions occupied by different classes in the social division of labour. It is further determined by their different forms of organization and their respective strategies in the different fields of class struggle (SPS: 44, 147; EPS: 49, 161-162; cf. PPSC: 95, 105-7; PPCS-I: 97, 108-111). Whilst this critique might well apply to Foucaults early analytics of power in Surveiller et Punir, it does not hold for his later comments. For he argued, first, that his work on technologies of power was not reducible to a metaphysics of Power with a capital P. Thus, criticizing some French "Marxists" [who] maintain that power for me is "endogenous" and that I would like to construct a real and true ontological circle, deducing power from power, Foucault claims that he always tried to do just the opposite' (1978a: 185; DE2: 630). More specifically, he argues that power always operates on pre-existing differentiations and can involve different media and mechanisms, different objectives, different forms of institutionalization, different rationalizations (1982: [Power: Essential Writings: 337, 344-5]; DE2: 1053; 1977b: [P/K: 164]; DE2 206). He likewise argued that relations of power are interwoven with other kinds of relations (production, kinship, family, sexuality) for which they play at once a conditioning and a conditioned role (Pouvoirs et Stratgies, 1977/2001: 425). And he argued that types of power vary according to how these different aspects are articulated. Thus Foucault distinguished four different models of power: an emphasis on power and obedience (e.g., the monastery, penitentiary), on goal-directedness (e.g., the workshop or hospital), on communication (e.g., apprenticeship), or saturation by all

three objectives (e.g., military discipline) (1982 [Power: Essential Writings: 338-339]; DE2: 1053-4; cf. 1973 [Power: Essential Writings: 83]; DE2 1486-88). Second, on state power, whilst still arguing for the dispersion of powers, insisting that the state, for all its omnipotence, does not occupy the whole field of power relations, and claiming that the state can only operate on the basis of other, already existing power relations, Foucault also conceded that the State invests and colonizes these other power relations in a conditioning-conditioned relationship to generate a kind of meta-power that renders its own functioning possible (1977a: [P/K: 122-3]; DE2 150-1). Indeed, power relations have been progressively governmentalized, that is to say, elaborated, rationalized, and centralized in the form of, or under the auspices of, state institutions (1982: [Power: Essential Writings: 345]; DE2 1059-1060). This explains why Barret-Kriegel could later note that 'Foucault's thought opened the way to a return to the study of the State and the law' (1992: 192). Third, Poulantzas argued that Foucault's analyses privilege 'power' over resistance. Power is essentialized and absolute, resistances are reduced to secondary reactions to power. Foucault could not, therefore, explain resistance. At best he understood it as the product of a natural, primordial plebeian spirit of resistance that seeks to escape from all power relations but is always re-absorbed as soon as the 'plebs' adopts a specific power strategy. In contrast, for Poulantzas, the limits to power are inherent in its very mechanisms. For these mechanisms always incorporate and condense the struggles of the dominated classes without being able to fully integrate and absorb them. Indeed, Poulantzas insisted that the class struggle always has primacy over the institutions and apparatuses of power (SPS: 149-52; EPS: 163-165). Again, Foucault might have responded that he had moved away from a reliance on plebeian instincts to explain resistance because his work on assujettissement and technologies of the self had shown how independent bases might develop from which to resist the exercise of power (0000). He also argued that Revolution involves the subversive codification of a whole number of power relations same relations (1977a: [P/K: 122-3]; DE2: 150-1). Fourth, Foucault allegedly committed two complementary errors in analyzing power.

For, while he stressed only the repressive, prohibitive side of law, he stressed only the positive, productive side of disciplinary (state) power. In contrast, argued Poulantzas, law and the state both organize repression and police measures and both are actively involved in defining social relations and winning mass support. These errors led Foucault to exaggerate both the general significance of disciplinary techniques in the modern state and their particular role as a productive and positive force in securing compliance. This meant in turn that he ignored the continued importance of violence, legal-police networks, and law more generally in backing up these techniques. In particular, Foucault ignored the positive roles of constitutional and administrative law in codifying and regulating the exercise of organized public violence and of law more generally in providing a framework for pursuing interests in a peaceful, consensual manner. Likewise, in arguing that disciplinary normalization operated through internalized repression, Foucault ignored the indirect role played by coercion in sustaining the web of disciplinary and ideological mechanisms. He also understated the continued importance of overt violence in the state's activities and therefore exaggerated the break between the feudal and modern states (SPS: 77-78; EPS 8487). Once again, Poulantzass criticisms were well directed at Foucaults earlier analytics of power but did not (or could not) take account of Foucaults later rejection of such positions. Thus Foucault went on to concede that he had overemphasized disciplinary power in adopting the Nietzschean repressive hypothesis and so began to focus on the art of government (the conduct of conduct) as a means of securing the active complicity of the subjects of power in their own self-regulation. When we consider Foucaults later analyses of liberalism, the Ordo-liberals, and the Chicago School, for example, it becomes clear that he, too, is aware of the complex articulation and mutual implications of direct repression, constitutional law, police measures, and selfregulation. Fifth, Poulantzas argued that the significance of the link between power and knowledge should not be overstressed. For Poulantzas himself these merely complemented and

reinforced the primary and spontaneous forms of ideology secreted into the state system and/or into political practices from the capitalist relations of production and the social division of labour (SPS: 66; EPS: 72). In particular, he gave much greater weight to the general role of the mental-manual division of labour than did Foucault (SPS: 5962; EPS: 59-68). Given his views on the science/ideology distinction and his preference for the analysis of truth regimes, this is one area where Foucault could not move towards Poulantzass theoretical positions. Sixth, Poulantzas argues that Foucaults analyses are ultimately descriptive and, worse still, functionalist. In this context, he cites SP on the panopticons role in functioning on behalf of power (SPS: 67-68; EPS: 74-5). Foucault addresses such claims (not necessarily as leveled by Poulantzas), however, in his rather disingenuous insistence in a couple of interviews that he had never described Benthams Panopticon as a practical model for the exercise of power. On the contrary, it was an ideal-typical construction that was never implemented (references to follow). But Poulantzas might well have responded that, whatever the historical status of Benthams design, Foucault certainly did describe the genealogy of panopticism as a distinctive technique, technology, or diagram of power that could be found in many different institutional sites, that came to characterize the nineteenth century disciplinary society, and that, whatever its complex genealogy, was subsequently mobilized in the service of industrial capitalism (see below). Seventh, Poulantzas claimed that Foucault neglected the spatio-temporal matrix of the state (SPS: 69; EPS: 75-77). This claim can be readily conceded because the state was never central to Foucaults analyses but, pace Poulantzas, we should note that Foucault was a spatially sensitive theorist (see especially Elden 1999) and was also interested in the temporal dimensions of the art of government. Finally, Poulantzas criticized Foucault's approach to political strategy. Foucault had once insisted that micro-revolts could only succeed if their supporters refused to be incorporated into the state and instead concentrated on subverting it from the outside.

Indeed new social movements should also resist any coordination by overarching political organizations (such as political parties) since this could lead to their reabsorption into the state system. For Poulantzas it was essential to combine new social movements and struggles for direct democracy with radical changes in the representative institutions of the state system. He claimed that it is impossible to locate oneself outside (state) power because popular struggles necessarily have an effect on the state (and other power mechanisms) even when the masses are physically excluded from (political) participation. He also claimed that an abstentionist strategy might simply clear the path to an enhanced statism. Poulantzas's preferred strategy involved participation inside the mechanisms of power to intensify their internal contradictions and conflicts. This need not result in complete absorption and loss of autonomy. For whether or not the dominated classes are integrated into these mechanisms depends on the specific strategies they pursue and does not follow simply from the fact that they have adopted a strategy of involvement. Provided that these strategies are designed to maintain the autonomy of the masses they will never be fully integrated. But Poulantzas added that the masses should also pursue struggles at a distance from the state. They should develop direct, rank-and-file democracy and introduce self-management networks and this would facilitate a democratic transition to democratic socialism (SPS: 153; EPS: 168-169). Some Hidden Parallels I now turn to the hidden parallels between the work of Poulantzas and Foucault. These are all the more interesting and significant precisely because Poulantzas was so critical of much of Foucault's work on the analytics of power. Parallels can are found in the following areas: their insistence on the ubiquity of power and the state; their insistence on the immanence of power within social relations and of the state inside the mode of production; their approach to diachronic relations in terms of a primitive source of resistance in plebeian qualities or 'class instincts'; and, finally, their inability to provide a satisfactory account of the relation between what they themselves treat as the 'micro-' and 'macro-levels' of power.

1. Ubiquity of Power and/or the State Foucault held that power is immanent in all social relations. He insisted that 'relations of power are not in a position of exteriority with respect to other types of relationships (economic processes, knowledge relationships, sexual relations), but are immanent in the latter' (HS1: 94). Elsewhere he argued 'that power is "always already there", that one is never "outside" it, that there are no "margins" for those who break with the system to gambol in' (PK: 141). Poulantzas also argued that all social relation are relations of power and firmly rejected a 'topological image of exteriority' in examining the relation between the state and other fields (SPS: 17, 25-7, 35-9, 44, 146-8, 167) (une figure topologique dextriorit, EPS: 18, 28-30, 39-44, 49, 160-162, 184). More significantly still, he claimed that, 'once the state is admitted, we cannot imagine any social phenomenon (any knowledge, power, language, or writing) having a primitive, pre-political existence: all social phenomena always occur in relation to the state and class division' (SPS: 39, corrected translation; cf. 37, 43) (on ne peut penser, une fois ltat pos, un reel social quelconque (un savoir, un pouvoir, une langue, une criture) figurant un tat premier par rapport ltat, mais un reel social toujours en relation avec ltat et avec la division en classes, EPS: 44; cf. 41-42, 48). In short, once given classdivided societies, the state is inscribed in all social relations. 2. Diagram and Mode of Production Foucault and Poulantzas emphasized the hidden unity of social relations achieved through the dominance of a given form of power. For Poulantzas, the structural matrix of the dominant mode of production pervaded all social relations and it was the state's special responsibility to invest the different sites of power and assign them appropriate class pertinence. In contrast, Foucault deployed the concept of the 'diagram'. This refers to a distinctive formula for power, a specific technology of power, a definite mode of political domination (or sur-pouvoir). Thus Foucault contrasted the monarchical formula of medieval society with the 'panopticism' of the disciplinary society. He considered

Bentham's design for a modern, disciplinary penitentiary (the Panopticon) as 'the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form ... a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use' (DP: 205). And he argued that the panoptic scheme spread throughout the social body. In this sense the prison form can also be found in hospitals, workshops, schools, barracks, and, indeed, to any social space. The panoptic diagram thereby became 'the general principle of a 'new political anatomy' whose object and end are not the relations of sovereignty but the relations of discipline' (DP: 208; cf. 215-6, 223). In this sense, although Foucault emphasized the multiplicity of dispersed micro-power relations, he also argued that they typically involve the same forces, means, or techniques of power. This poses a problem for Foucault similar to that in Poulantzas's claim about the all-pervading nature of production relations. Thus, whereas Poulantzas risked reducing every social relation to a class relation through its subsumption under a dominant mode of production, Foucault risked denying the specificity of different social relations by emphasizing their use of the same technique of power. Thus, while Poulantzas tends to treat all social relations as capitalist relations, Foucault tends to reduce capitalist relations (e.g., in the labour process) to disciplinary relations (1982 [Power: Essential Writings: 337-342]; DE2 1051-1057) (on this latter tendency, see Ewald, 1975: 1240-6). This is reflected in how the two theorists understood struggles. Foucault argued that 'the main objective of these struggles is to attack not so much "such or such" an institution of power, or group, or elite, or class, but rather a technique, a form of power' (1982 [Power: Essential Writings: 331]: DE2 1046). Likewise Poulantzas tended to argue that struggles are ultimately class struggles because they are rooted in the social division of labour and seek to transform it (SPS: passim; EPS: passim). Thus, if capitalist relations of production were Poulantzass principal point of reference, the main reference point in Foucaults analyses was the technology of power (on Foucault's concept of diagram, see: Deleuze 1975).

3. Plebeian Spirits and Class Instincts Another parallel occurs in these theorists' accounts of power and resistance. In attempting to explain resistance Foucault was forced back to 'something in the social body, in classes, groups, and individuals themselves which in some sense escapes relations of power ... an inverse energy, a discharge ... a plebeian quality or aspect' (1977e: [P/K: 138]; DE2: 421). This remark shows a clear debt to the nouveau philosophe, Andr Glucksmann (1975, 1977), who had already demoted the role of the proletariat and Marxist intellectuals in favour of the revolutionary potential of the plebs. Later, in Volont de Savoir, Foucault grounded resistance in the simple celebration of bodies and pleasures in the plural, in their specificity; and, more generally, in genealogies and historical knowledge to provide a link between power and subjugated knowledge (cf. Lemert and Gillan 1982: 89, 91). Poulantzas scorned resort to a spirit of refusal that was treated as an essence, as absolute, and as external to any specific power relation (SPS: 150; EPS: 166). He preferred to ground class resistance in the contradiction or antagonism between the exploiting and exploited, oppressing and oppressed, classes (SPS: 27, 36, 38, 44-5, 148, 174; EPS: 30, 40, 42, 49-50, 162-3, 192-3). But, when Poulantzas tried to explain the origins of such class resistance, his answer was no more satisfactory than Foucault's. Poulantzas claimed that subordinate classes can be contaminated by the dominant ideology and adopt positions inconsistent with their own class interests. Thus even the working class risked being permanently absorbed into the web of bourgeois domination. Yet Poulantzas argued that 'even under the effects of bourgeois ideology, there still always breaks through in the working class what Lenin referred to as "class instinct"' (CCC: 288; cf. 16-17, 31, 276) sous les effets mmes de lidologie bourgeoise dans la classe ouvrire pointe toujours ce que Lnine dsignait comme instinct de classe (CSC: 308; cf. 19-20, 36, 294). For Lenin the concept of 'class instinct' was basically descriptive. Poulantzas tried to provide a stronger basis for class instincts in what he described as the constant resurgence in working class practices of a structurallydetermined opposition to its exploitation in the factory and material production (CCC:

16, 288; CSC: 19, 308). But this appears to resurrect the discredited economistic and teleological claim that a 'class-in-itself' will eventually emerge and/or to assume a philosophical anthropology in which men naturally react against exploitation and oppression. Such arguments are little different from Foucault's views on plebeian spirits. Elsewhere Poulantzas emphasized the role of ideology in determining even the 'spontaneous' revolt of the dominant classes. This suggests that it is wrong to posit an essential and absolute 'class instinct' of resistance external to any specific class relation. For resistance can never exist outside ideology and is thus always contingent and relative. Poulantzas seems to concede this when he writes that, 'in the context of the rise of fascism, this "class instinct", cut off from Marxist-Leninist ideology and facing these particular forms of petty-bourgeois ideology (sc. anarcho-syndicalism, spontaneism, and the cult of violence), foundered under the influence of the latter' (1970: 146). In short, insofar as Poulantzas seeks to move beyond a notion of 'class instinct', he is forced to admit the contingency, relativity, and variability of class struggle. This would force him to provide historical accounts of specific class struggles and thereby adopt a more Foucauldian, genealogical approach. Moreover, regarding new social movements and non-class struggles, Poulantzas did not even offer an 'instinctual' explanation for resistance to non-class forms of oppression. 4. Micro-Diversity and Macro-Necessity A fourth parallel concerns the attempts to bridge the gap between diversity at the micro-level and relative unity at the macro-level of social relations. Poulantzas and Foucault adopted the same basic distinction treating the micro-level in terms of specific institutional sites of power and equating the macro-level with individual societies whose boundaries coincide with those of a nation-state. In this context, Foucault's starting point was the multitude of dispersed micro-powers and technologies of power. He cautioned against a priori judgments about their underlying unity in a massive and primal condition of domination; and he was particularly critical of the view that a central instance, such as the state, could secure their unity. Poulantzas certainly did start out

from a massive and primal condition of domination the social division of labour and class struggle. Moreover, although he recognized that non-class relations could be secondary sites of power and resistance, he always stressed their links to class struggle. The state has a crucial role here because it invests all other areas of society with class pertinence and is the central site for the exercise of power in regard to class and non-class struggles alike. For other domains of power could be only substantially modified when the state had been transformed (SPS: 44; EPS: 49). The contrast here is doubly deceptive. For, on the one hand, Poulantzas came to see the state as an ensemble of distinct circuits of power, networks, and apparatuses that pursue a multiplicity of diversified micro-policies. Indeed, in describing how class contradictions are reproduced in the state apparatus and depicting its various mechanisms of structural selectivity, Poulantzas continually drew attention to the prodigious incoherence and chaotic character of state policies (SPS: 132, 135-6, 229; EPS: 144, 148-9, 254-255; cf. 1970: 329-30; CD: 49-50, 84; CD: 51-53, 86-87). This appears to confirm Foucault's claim that power should be studied in terms of the 'microphysics of power' rather than some overall principle of class domination and undermines the assumption that the state embodies a binary structure of class power. Indeed Poulantzas once confessed that he had turned to Foucault in EPS in an attempt to break with the dogmatic Marxism found in Althusserian structuralism. Agreeing that he had adopted a new language, he explained that 'I am approaching some new problems and am thus at a stage of exploration'. He added that 'it is especially in discussing the theses of Michel Foucault that I have been led to coquette my language and this is particularly true when it comes to the analysis of the techniques of power' (Poulantzas 1978b). Nonetheless Poulantzas still tried to explain how micro-diversity culminates in the macro-necessity of bourgeois domination. He treated the state as 'a strategic field and process of intersecting power networks ... traversed by tactics which are often highly explicit at the restricted level of their inscription in the state: they intersect and conflict with one another, finding their targets in some apparatuses or being short-circuited by

others, and eventually map out that general line of force, the state's policy, which traverses confrontations within the state' (SPS: 136) (un champ et un processus stratgiques, o sentrecroisent des noeuds et des rseaux de pouvoir Ce champ stratgique est travers de tactiques souvent fort explicites au niveau limit o elles sinscrivent dans ltat, tactiques qui sencroisement, se combattent, trouvent des points dimpact dans certains appareils, se font court-circuiter par dautres et dessinent finalement ce quon appelle la politique de ltat, ligne de force gnrale qui traverse les affrontements au sein de ltat, EPS: 149). This general line of force does not emerge automatically from the institutional logic of the state system. Nor is it due to the successful application of a coherent global project formulated at the apex of the state and known in advance (SPS: 33, 136; EPS: 36, 149). Indeed, even though the state might openly discuss the strategies and tactics required to reproduce political class domination, the best strategy often emerges only ex post through the collision of mutually opposed tactics (SPS: 32-33, 135-7; EPS: 36, 148-150). In this sense, the general line of force is a complex resultant of interaction between the state's institutional structure and the clash of specific strategies and tactics. On the other hand, while Foucault certainly suggested beginning with the specificities of different mechanisms of power at the lowest levels, he increasingly focused on their investment and annexation by ever more general mechanisms and integrated into global forms of domination (1976b [P/K: 99]; DE2 180-1; cf. PTS: 39; HS1: 94, 99-100; 1991, 2003). Indeed, he recognized that the interconnections among the different forms of power delineate general conditions of domination, and this domination is organized into a more-or-less coherent and unitary strategic form; that dispersed, heteromorphous, localized procedures of power are adapted, reinforced and transformed by these global strategies, all this being accompanied by numerous phenomena of inertia, displacement, and resistance; hence one should not assume a massive and primal condition of domination, a binary structure with 'dominators' on one side and 'dominated' on the other, but rather a multiform

production of relations of domination which are partially susceptible of integration into overall strategies (1977e: [P/K: 142]; DE2 425; cf. HS1: 94). dessine des faits gnraux de domination, que cette domination sorganise en stratgie plus ou moins cohrente et unitaire; que les procedures disperses, htromorphes et locales de pouvoir sont rajustes, renforces, transformes par ces strategies globales et tout cela avec des phnomennes nombreux dinertie, de dcalages, de resistances; quil ne faut donc pas se donner un fait premier et massif de domination (une structure binaire avec dun ct les dominants et de lautre les domines), mais plutt une production multiforme de rapports de domination qui sont partiellement intgrables a des strategies densemble (DE2 245). Moreover, in addressing this emergent pattern of domination, Foucault referred to the 'general line of force that traverses local confrontations' and links them together (HS1: 94; paraphrased in SPS: 136; EPS: 149). And, in describing this general line, Foucault invoked concepts such as 'social hegemonies', 'hegemonic effects', 'hegemony of the bourgeoisie', 'meta-power', 'class domination', 'sur-pouvoir' (or a 'surplus power' analogous to surplus value), 'global strategy', and so forth (e.g., HS1: 92-3, 94, 1977b [P/K: 156]; DE2 199; 1977a [P/K: 122]; DE2 151; 1977f [P/K: 188], DE2 232; DP: 223; and PTS: 60). He also gave a privileged role to the state as the point of strategic codification of the multitude of power relations and the apparatus in which hegemony, meta-power, class domination, or 'sur-pouvoir' are crystallized (e.g., PTS: 39; HS1: 92, 141; Two Lectures [PK: 101] DE2 182-184; 1977a [P/K: 122], DE2 151; 1977c [P/K: 199-200]; DE2 303). In short, in developing his political anatomy of power, Foucault allowed for a relatively unified pattern of domination across dispersed micro-powers that is secured through the strategic aims of the state apparatus (Sheridan 1980: 219; cf. Foucault 1977c [P/K: 199-200]; DE2 303). This becomes even more evident in his work on the periodization of different forms of statecraft, distinguishing between pastoral care, the disciplinary society, and liberal governmentality (Foucault 1991; 2003).

The paradox of outspoken opposition to vulgar Marxism and implicit adoption of Marxian (and, by implication, Poulantzasian) positions is similar to the contrast between Poulantzass rejection of Foucault as an epistemologist and general theorist and his tactical adoption of ideas from Foucault as an analyst of power. This is why Balibar can advance the following general hypothesis on the Marx-Foucault relation: this strategic complexity follows a general format, which is repeated several times, in which a movement is made from a break to a tactical alliance, the first involving a global critique of Marxism as a "theory"; the second a partial usage of Marxist tenets or affirmations compatible with Marxism. One might even suggest that the latter become at the same time more and more limited and more and more specifically Marxist. Thus, in contradictory fashion, the opposition to Marxist "theory" grows deeper and deeper whilst the convergence of the analyses and concepts taken from Marx becomes more and more significant. It should be added that it is not when Foucault most often quotes Marx that he most uses him, nor is it when he has been reading Marx most clearly that Foucault puts forward the most radical critiques of him' (Balibar 1992: 53). This movement is also seen in Foucault's changing views on micro-revolts and political struggle. For, whilst he did celebrate the infinite dispersion of scattered resistances and micro-revolts, he later conceded the need for resistances to be readjusted, reinforced, and transformed by global strategies of transformation. Foucault noted that resistances needed co-ordination in the same way that the dominant class organized its strategies to secure its own 'sur-pouvoir' (or political preponderance) in diverse power relations (HS1: 96; PK: 159, 203; PTS: 60). Thus we find him moving closer to positions advanced by Poulantzas in EPS and this means that Poulantzas's critique of Foucault therein was misdirected or, at least, given Foucaults continuing theoretical development, premature. Thus, despite their contrasting starting points at different ends of a micro-macro

continuum that they nonetheless conceived in more or less identical terms, Poulantzas and Foucault seem to have agreed that the overall unity of a system of domination must be explained in terms of a strategic codification of power relations. This process is both intentional and nonsubjective. It is intentional because no power is exercised without a series of aims and objectives, which are often highly explicit at the limited level of their inscription in local sites of power (HS1: 94; cf. Poulantzas's paraphrase in SPS: 136; EPS: 149). Foucault refers here to explicit programmes for reorganizing institutions, rearranging spaces, regulating behaviours (1980: 9). But it is non-subjective because the overall outcome of the clash of micro-powers cannot be understood as resulting from the choice or decision of an individual, group, or class subject (cf. Foucault HS1: 94-5; Poulantzas SPS: 32-3, 136; EPS: 35-36, 149). Things never work out as planned because 'there are different strategies which are mutually opposed, composed, and superposed so as to produce permanent and solid effects which can perfectly well be understood in terms of their rationality, even though they don't conform to the initial programming; this is what gives the resulting apparatus (dispositif) its solidity and suppleness' (Foucault 1980: 10). Or, as Foucault expressed it in another place: 'the logic is perfectly clear, the aims decipherable, and yet it is often the case that no one is there to have invented them, and few can be said to have formulated them' (HS1: 95). Likewise, for Poulantzas, the state's policy is still decipherable as a strategic calculation but this is not the result of the rational formulation of a coherent global project but stems from the conflictual coordination of explicit and diversified micro-policies and tactics (SPS: 33, 136; EPS: 36, 149). Beyond Poulantzas and Foucault A useful starting point for moving beyond Poulantzas and Foucault is the work of the self-professed post-Marxist theorists, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In using some of their ideas below I do not mean to endorse all of their theoretical and political arguments (for critiques, see Jessop, 1982: 191-202; and 1990: 288-302). But their approach to articulation remains highly relevant to the concerns of Poulantzas and Foucault. For they treat the general field of the interdiscursive as a complex series of

'elements' available for integration into specific discourses. The latter fix the meaning of these elements in relation to an overall discursive system and thereby transform them into relatively fixed 'moments' in that discourse. But they also argue that no discourse can totally fix the meaning of these moments (there is always polyvalence and a surplus of meaning) and that no element is totally without some points of articulation with discourses (1985). In these terms, whereas Foucault started from the fluidity of the 'elements' in a polyvalent and unstable series of micro-relations of forces, Poulantzas began from the fixity of the 'moments' of a class-based division of labour. In focusing on fluid 'elements', Foucault could find no solid base for power structures, interests, or resistance. Thus he oscillated between (a) a sociological amorphy in which resistance was grounded in a philosophical anthropology of 'plebeian instincts' or, later, the celebration of bodies and pleasures and (b) a crude class reductionism in which stable societal structures derive from the global strategies of the bourgeoisie and/or from the imperatives of capital accumulation (see particularly DP and PK: 156). Conversely, in focusing on the fixed class 'moments' Poulantzas could only ground power structures, interests, and resistance in the relations of production. Thus, although he tried to integrate greater complexity into his analysis, he could only do so by elaborating the concepts of class analysis in ever-greater profusion and introducing ever more incoherence into the mechanisms of political class domination. In short, the distinction between 'elements' and 'moments' enables us to identify why Foucault and Poulantzas tended to return to their respective starting points. The same distinction also suggests a way forward. For it enables us to question both the necessity of a given macro-social order and the apparent contingency of the microrelations on which it is constructed. The solution to the problem of micro-diversity and macro-necessity sought by Foucault and Poulantzas can be found in the non-necessary correspondence among different elements that have been integrated into global projects and thereby transformed into relatively stable moments of a macro-social order. This implies that there are a variety of possible macro-social orders (each with its own

surplus of meaning and range of relatively unincorporated elements) rather than one uniquely necessary macro-social order (that links all the elements in a society as stable moments of an integrated society). It also implies that the diversity of micro-social relations has its limits. For, although individual relations or institutions can be considered in isolation as polyvalent elements without any fixity, they are typically integrated into longer chains and systems of elements, which restrict their fluidity and lability. Specific practices must exploit the polyvalent potential of individual relations to deconstruct some chains of meaning and power and construct others. Not all such attempts at disarticulation and rearticulation will succeed. This is where notions such as the strategic selectivity of specific institutional ensembles, the balance of forces, and strategies of domination can be deployed as part of the analytic of power in order to understand the nature and limits of political projects. Foucault and Poulantzas seem to have been moving in this direction in their final work. Thus Poulantzas's account of state power as a social relation examined the state form as a strategic terrain and the role of strategies themselves in transforming the balance of forces. In Volont de Savoir, Foucault had already observed how relations of force constitute their own organization by forming relatively fixed chains and systems (HS1: 92-3). Later he noted that an analysis of power relations must establish four key points: (a) a system of differentiations that permits a given agent to act on the actions of others; (b) objectives held by those who so act; (c) means of bringing power relations into being; (d) institutional sites; and (e) degrees of rationalization of the strategies (1982: 223-4). The first item is particularly significant. For, in dealing with difference, it points to the discursive construction of difference (the transformation of elements into moments) as the basis of a stable exercise of power. At the same time Foucault's reference to means and institutional sites helps him avoid reducing power relations to a set of mere decisions or acts of will. Indeed Foucault noted two ways in which diverse micro-elements can be linked into an overall project:

On the one hand, there is a process of functional overdetermination, because each effect -- positive or negative, intentional or unintentional -- enters into resonance or contradiction with the others and thereby calls for a readjustment or a re-working of the heterogeneous elements that surface at various points. On the other hand, there is a perpetual process of strategic elaboration. ... This is what I call the strategic completion (remplissement) of the apparatus (1977c: [P/K: 195, 196]). Processus de surdtermination fonctionelle, dune part, puisque chaque effect, positif et ngatif, voulu ou non voulu, vient entre en resonance, ou en contradiction, avec les autres, et appelle une reprise, un rajustement, des elements htrognes qui surgiessent a et l. Processus de perpetual remplissement stratgique, dautre part. Voil ce que jappelle le remplissement stratgique du dispositif (1977c, DE2 299, 300). Gordon provides a useful insight on Foucaults definition of strategy: the minimum force of rationality pertaining to the exercise of power in general which consists in the mobile set of operations whereby a multiplicity of heterogeneous elements (forces, resources, the features of a terrain, the disposition and relation of objects in space-time) are invested with a particular functionality relative to a dynamic and variable set of objectives. Strategy is the exploitation of possibilities which it itself discerns and creates' (Gordon 1991: 39). This comment brings out clearly the interaction between strategic discourses and strategic terrains and their implications for the relative fluidity or fixity of the elements in the play of power and strategy. In adopting such an approach, however, one should note that global projects are only tendential attempts at totalization. Global strategies have no abstract unifying function

but must always be related to specific technologies of power, sites of strategic intervention, and particular policies. In turn societies must be understood as products of a dispersed plurality of practices with no necessary centre or unifying principle. In this sense neither Poulantzas nor Foucault went far enough. Each implied that societies could be considered as a global site (the 'macro-level') and should be analyzed 'as if' there were a global strategy. They both argued that social order at this level could be understood as a process of strategic calculation without a calculating subject. This involves two basic problems. It assumes a macro-site of social relations that is located at the level of societies and then treats this as the focus of a global strategy. But, without a global calculating subject, can one really posit a global strategy; and, if there are doubts whether societies really exist and are endowed with a distinctive unity, can one assume that there is a privileged global site of strategic calculation? An alternative approach would adopt a strictly relational approach to global strategies (cf. Wickham 1983). From this perspective, a global strategy attempts to subtend and articulate a number of smaller sites of power relations within its orbit. In Foucauldian terms, it attempts to structure the possible field and scope of action on the smaller sites (Foucault 1982 [Power: Essential Writings: 341]; DE2 1056). These smaller sites nonetheless continue to have an independent existence (to enjoy their own relative autonomy, if you like) and to constitute potential sites of structural recalcitrance and/or social resistance to the global strategy. Different global strategies will seek to articulate different smaller sites so that the global sites on which these strategies operate will also differ. In this context the notion of global must be understood relatively, that is, a strategy is global only in relation to its own smaller sites. A global strategy may itself constitute a 'smaller' site for an even more ambitious strategy (Wickham 1983). This means that there is no macro-necessity in social relations and no reason to privilege societies as the essential site of macro-social order. All we have are attempts to constitute contingently necessary global systems on different sites and in relation to different sets of smaller power relations. Alternative global strategies will condense and transform different sets of conflicts and contradictions in and through a state system

whose precise nature will vary with the problems it confronts. In turn this means that we must think of a plurality of possible global strategies even within the framework of one nation-state whose precise nature, social boundaries, cohesive capacities, and dynamics will differ according to which global strategy (if any) becomes dominant. Such an approach also offers a better understanding of resistance. For it is in the fixing of differences and the articulation of different subject positions that the antagonisms that produce resistance originate. Crucial to understanding these mechanisms is the distinction between the general field of the discursive and the specific fields constituted by particular discourses. This is reflected in the distinction between floating elements in the self-identities of persons and groups (as empirical referents) and the attempts to fix these elements into a particular system of differences. Resistance is rooted in the first instance in the availability of alternative meanings in the elements and in agents' attachment to meanings that are contrary to those which are being imposed through particular meaning systems. There is no primal source of resistance, whether in plebeian or class instincts: resistance is always a contingent effect of contrary or contradictory attempts at specifying subjects, their identities and interests (for an analogous attempt to rescue Foucault's approach to resistance, see Philp 1983). Finally, in developing this approach we can also provide an account of interests. One must reject attempts to root interests in a material substratum of relations (e.g., class interests, gender antagonisms grounded in patriarchal domination) with all the problems this poses for explaining the movement from latent to manifest conflicts of interest. Instead interests should be introduced as secondary effects of resistance-engendering differences. They are secondary because interests are always relative, relational, conjunctural, and strategic. They are relative because a given situation is only ever more or less in one's interests than some specified alternative(s) (cf. Barry 1965). They are relational because the opportunity to advance or defend ones interests depends on the relations of force that obtain in a given context. They are conjunctural because different conjunctures will entail different sets of alternatives among which to assess interests. This implies that they are related to specific spatio-temporal horizons of action

(e.g., in the contrast between short- and long-term interests or between individual and national interests). And they are strategic because different conceptions of strategy imply different conceptions of interests, alliances, tactics, and so on. Thus a thoroughgoing strategic-relational approach involves a basic reformulation of the key concepts involved in power analysis. This focus on macro-micro issues could be seen as marginal in various ways. First, Richard Marsden, adopting a critical realist reading of Foucault has suggested that: 'Marx explains "why", that is, he describes the imperative of the social structure that facilitates and constrains social action, but he does not explain "how", Foucault explains "how", that is, he describes the mechanisms of power; but he does not explain "why", the motive or purpose of disciplinary power' (Marsden 1999: 149; on the distinction between why and how [comment et pourquoi], see also Foucault 1982: [P/K: 336-7], DE2 1051-2). But this can easily be rephrased in micro-macro terms. For Foucaults answer to the how question provides some of the micro-foundations necessary to sustain Marxs answer to the why question of the macro-dynamic of capital accumulation. Second, and more pointedly, tienne Balibar has commented that, if there is an irreducible divergence between Foucault and Marx, it does not lie in the contrast between the microphysics and macrophysics of power (local and global) but in the opposition between the Marxian logic of contradiction (in which the power relation is only a strategic moment) and Foucaults logical structure of power relations (in which contradiction is but one possible configuration) (1992: 52). This would be a powerful criticism if one could readily subsume the dynamics of social order entirely under the logic of capital accumulation and its contradictions. It is less persuasive, however, if one accepts, with Poulantzas, that the struggle for hegemony (and a key role for the state in this regard) articulating non-contradictory social relations with the changing imperatives of capital accumulation. This introduces a degree of contingency into the ensemble of social relations and leaves it open whether the contradictory logic of capital accumulation is always the principal aspect of all social formations or whether there are alternatives principles of societalization. This is a question for which both Poulantzas and Foucault provide us with fruitful but partial conceptual toolkits.

Conclusions There are major differences between the work of Foucault and Poulantzas that persisted over their intellectually productive years. Poulantzas was a committed Marxist theorist, reflected deeply on the problems of Marxist theory, was especially concerned to develop a theory of the capitalist state and state power, focused on a distinctive, capitalist type of state rather than the modern state more generally, was more interested in this type of state after it had been consolidated than its genealogy, and, even when interested in other topics, related them closely to the nature of the state as a social relation. In contrast, Foucault rejected Marxism as a grand theory that claimed an exclusive scientific status but occasionally flirted with Marxist notions, reflected deeply on the arbitrariness of claims to theoretical truth but changed his approach to this problem over the years, experienced a succession of theoretical ruptures in his theoretical object and methodological assumptions, focused on the genealogy of the state in emergent capitalist societies, and generally prioritized other topics over the analysis of the state. Nonetheless, as Foucaults theoretical interests shifted from the micro-physics of the disciplinary society and its anatomo-politics to the more general strategic codification of a plurality of discourses, practices, technologies of power, and institutional ensembles around a specific governmental rationality concerned with the social body (bio-power) in a consolidated capitalist society, we can identify a growing convergence in his work towards ideas and arguments that can be found in Poulantzas. Conversely, as Poulantzass theoretical interests shifted from the attempt to develop an autonomous Marxist science of politics towards the state as the institutional condensation of a changing balance of social forces, he became increasingly interest in the relevance of Foucaults work on power and strategy to his own state-theoretical project. Poulantzas was more strongly influenced by Foucault than is recognized in accounts of his work that read him as a structural Marxist. This influence involves more than a simple flirtation with Foucault's language. For he and Foucault came to share crucial

assumptions about power and strategy and the sources of the relative unity and cohesion of social formations. They do not invoke power as a principle of explanation external to specific social relations but as a relational phenomenon that itself needs explanation. In developing this approach, they highlighted in their different ways the strategic nature of power relations and the important role that the articulation of different sites, modalities, and rationales of power plays in stabilizing (or destabilizing) individual sites. This rules out any general theory of power in favour of specific historical accounts of the contingently necessary construction of particular patterns of social order and disorder. But neither analyst recognized the problems involved in starting from a micromacro continuum whose twin poles are defined as specific institutional sites and a society whose boundaries are defined by the nation-state. Thus, while they emphasized one or other pole of the continuum respectively, each thinker oscillated in his arguments. Only by reformulating the poles of the continuum along which they moved can one eliminate their inconsistencies. It is essential to question the necessary fixity of the macro-level and the apparent fluidity of the micro-level. This broadens the space within which the sort of analyses of power and strategy favoured by Poulantzas and Foucault can be applied. It undercuts Poulantzas's tendency to explain all social relations in terms of a necessary class domination and Foucault's tendency to deny the existence of macro-social order in favour of a nominalist emphasis on the diversity of the micro-social. Global strategies can then be seen as means of reducing the complexity of social relations and fixing them in a temporary, provisional, and always unstable way. As means for the self-description and self-identity of societies such strategies necessarily simplify the real pattern of social relations and thereby marginalize alternative interpretations and strategies. Thus a surplus of meanings and practices is always available for articulation into new strategies and power relations that can exploit the polyvalence of the dominant patterns. Such an approach to structure and strategy enables one to go beyond the limited answers of Foucault and Poulantzas. Bibliography Althusser, L. (1995) Sur la rproduction, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

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Endnotes
1

An early version of this paper was published in 1987 in the long-defunct journal, Ideas

and Production (issue 6, 59-87) and reprinted in my State Theory (1990: 220-247). This version reflects the appearance of further work by Foucault and my own theoretical development. Useful comments were provided by Grigoris Ananiadis, Ted Benton, Jim McGeachey, and the editors of Actuel Marx.
2 3

See Foucaults comments on Marxism in his interviews in Dits et crits (1995). Colin Gordon cited this in his 1996, at p. 263. In a recent personal communication he

confirmed the source as Lecture 4 of the 1979 Collge de France series, 31.1.1979.

This will be published in French in September 2004 (personal communication, 24.07.04).

4

Foucaults early work on governmentality was more concerned with the pre-history of

the capitalist type of state or, phrased differently, the historical constitution of the modern state and its distinctive technologies of power rather than with the formal constitution of the capitalist state and its distinctive forms of political class domination. Poulantzas commented only briefly on the historical constitution of the modern state (noting differences between the English, French, and German trajectories) and focused on the ideal-typical liberal bourgeois democratic state as the normal form of the state (PPSC). Thus both theorists tended to ignore the relationship between historical and formal constitution due to their one-sided concern with one or other process.
5

Foucault once remarked that one should have a small number of authors with whom

one thinks, with whom one works, but about whom one does not write' (1995: 703). But Poulantzas is most unlikely to rank alongside Heidegger, Nietzsche (before Foucaults genealogical turn), Marx himself, and Althusser in this regard. Indeed, there is no reference at all to Poulantzas in the comprehensive index of Dits et Ecrits (1994).
6

Poulantzas seems to deny this argument and thereby exaggerates the differences On this preference, Fontana and Bernati note that 'Foucault did not, it appears, keep

(see EPS: 40, citing both Deleuze and Foucault).

7

any record of the books he read, and he was not fond of debates with individual authors; he preferred problematization to polemic' (2003: 287).
8

The three major intellectual biographies of Foucault make no mention of significant

intellectual contacts with Poulantzas even though they were both employed at Vincennes and shared occasional political platforms (e.g., in relation to the Comit un bateau pour le Vietnam) (cf. Eribon 1989, 1994; Macey 1993).
9

Discipline was also used to control workers' bodies: 'it was not just a matter of

appropriating, extracting the maximum quantity of time but also of controlling, shaping, valorizing the individual's body according to a particular system' (Power: Essential Writings, 82).