NOTES
ON: Rancière, J. (2011) [1974] Althusser's
Lesson, trans Emiliano Battista. London:
Continuum International Publishing Group
by Dave Harris
[For good or ill, Rancière (R) tends to be a bit
repetitive, monotonous even, with his constant
refrain that there is equal capacity among all
social groups engaged in political struggle, but
that a number of analysts and theorists, including
leftwing ones, seem to find ways of denying
this. At its most paradoxical, it is those
philosophies and theories ostensibly designed to
emancipate the proletariat that do the most
damage, since they are also have to explain why it
is that the proletariat has not risen up or ready
to smash capitalism. The answer is because
they are systematically fooled about the
exploitative nature of the system, which goes
about reproducing inequality and defending itself
in ways which ensure compliance. The poor
old proletariat misrecognise this, and require
expert theorists and philosophers to explain it to
them. Ranciere is on a one man mission to
expose the flaws in this misrecognition argument,
and he does take on the best representatives of
it—Louis Althusser (LA), and, elsewhere,
Pierre Bourdieu.
The most systematic expose of LA, and the one I
read first, appears as an appendix to this later
book, and that is the section where I have the
most detailed notes. J.R. says that this is
actually a rather dated essay, and that he
hesitated before including in this collection,
principally because LA has written a great deal of
work afterwards, and also because it seemed far
too optimistic about the fate of revolutionary
movements in Europe and in China.
Nevertheless, if readers of this guide want to
turn to that first, it might help fill out some of
the sketchier notes of the rest of it.]
Foreword to the English edition
This was written before better known works by LA
such as the isas essay.
J.R. thinks that the text that he is about
to criticize represents the core of LA's position,
and isolates the moment when he was most effective
in becoming of dominant figure in Marxism.
He did much to insist that we returned to Marx's
thought, but also defended the authoritative
position of the Party in France [aka pcf], 'not
without ulterior motives' (xiv).
Structuralism was making a lot of ground in those
days, and LA wanted to develop connections with
it. However, May '68 took over the political
agenda, and LA became a major source for those who
wanted to see 'student uprisings as a petty
bourgeois movement, one whose actors were in fact
the victims of the bourgeois or ideology they
imbibed without knowing'.
This book wants to defend the effects of the
events in 1968, against the disenchantment that
was taking place. This included an attack on
militants as male and patriarchal, and as ascetic,
and one response was to turn to 'Deleuze and
Guattari's "desiring
machines"' (xv). Another was to read
the so-called new philosophy. Marxism also
tried to patch itself up and organize a return to
order, through the work of LA.
However, instead of sifting through these
alternatives, to arrive at a 'good theory of
emancipation', the book tries to keep open the
subversion of thought and practices displayed in
68, and to turn away altogether from emancipatory
theory and its stale discussions of the relation
to practice, in favour of studying 'the multiple
ways thought assumes form and produces effects on
the social body'. Foucault's Archaeology
looks promising in its analysis of discourses of
domination and how they might be exposed.
The focus was not on the old abstract fights
between materialism and idealism, but on 'the
rationality of thought at work', expressed in
institutions, dispositions, and actual words,
often in a borrowed, interpreted, and transformed
and impure form. This was to be opposed to
the usual teleological discourses about the march
of history which had been so disappointing.
Interest has been in conflicts and struggles, 'the
topography of the possible', and this informs the
book as a critique, not only of LA, but of the
broader transformation of revolutionary thought
and domination such as 'the sociology of
"misrecognition", the theory of the "spectacle",
and the different forms assumed by the critique of
consumer and communication societies' (xvi).
In these approaches, domination arises through the
ignorance of the dominated. At first, the
project is to bring science to the masses, but
this soon dissolves into resentment and
disillusion about the masses [fits UK gramscianism
really well].
At the heart of these approaches is 'the theory of
the inequality of intelligences'. This must
be inverted. At first this was associated
too closely with Maoist slogans about cultural
revolution. The anti authoritarianism of the
movements offered a radical critique of the
notions of the state and development found in
Russian communism. However, support for
maoism was too enthusiastic, although there is no
support for 'the inverse thesis, which essentially
reduces the mass movements of the Cultural
Revolution to a simple manipulation carried out by
Mao Tse-tung to recover a power he had lost in the
apparatus of the party' (xvii). The reality
was more complex, displaying not only the real
capacity for autonomy and initiative, but also the
existence of 'penitentiary realities' behind
policies such as reeducating intellectuals with
manual labour. This only goes to show that
'there is no theory of subversion that cannot also
serve the cause of oppression' after all.
Overall, this book has not produced sound
arguments for all its convictions, and some claims
and analyses should be challenged.
Nevertheless the underlying principle of 'a
capacity common to all' can produce both
emancipatory thought and emancipation. As a
result, no changes have actually been made in the
original version, even in the Appendix which was a
'written in the heat of the moment'. Some
reservations about it were originally added, but
not for this volume.
Preface
The book comments on LA's reply to John Lewis
and what it tells us. It is not an objective
analysis or a personally partisan one, and
it arises from the experiences of the 68
generation that saw LA as 'a philosophy of
order'separating itself from the uprisings.
There was some hesitation about criticising LA who
had done some good work in opening up various
paths and seeing off earlier philosophies such as
phenomenology, even making some readers into
militants. Actually, L A's work had already
been refuted by the events. How they were
still producing material, but it looks like a
pitiful struggle to square his work with the
events.
However, in 1973, LA reappeared still offering his
main discourse, that Marxism is a theoretical
antihumanism, and trying to discuss the criticisms
of Stalinism. Meanwhile real events, such as
the strike at Lip seem far more relevant [but see
an alternative and more critical account of the
Lip occupation here)
. Nevertheless, the Reply was hailed
as very important, reviving Marxism, and was
clearly implicated in the return of the old Party
dominance.
The book is not about replacing L A's concepts
with better more marxist ones, but rather
showing how Althusserianism actually works,
how it uses words and reasoning, and forms of
knowledge to construct what passes for a Marxist
discourse. The question therefore is 'what
does it mean to speak as a Marxist today?'
(xxi). The situation remains one where a
series of revolts are taking place, while the
official Marxism is also developing but is unable
to understand them [again the Lip occupation is
mentioned]. The disjunction has led to
reflection about Marxism, and its practice.
Do Marxists just read and teach Marx? do
they create organisations? Why so much time
defending or applying theory, what power relations
are at work? However, instead of analysing
these matters, Marxists, and others, have offered
'a discourse of justification' (xxii). It
seems to be about continuing academic discourses,
referring to events only as 'phantoms of their
speculations'. We can include Deleuzians,
who argue that we should abandon all the old
approaches, but urged us to read Nietzsche—'the
revolution, the proletariat—it's all reactive
libido, debt, resentment'. We just need to
change authors. Whenever the core concepts,
the underlying argument is that everything is in
vain, the world cannot be changed 'the point now
is to interpret it' [nice!]. Higher education
seems to provide us only with the skill of
speculation. Practice does not transform
consciousness. We have not left behind the
academy.
So we can start with the Reply as a way into L A.s
thought, especially the relation between theory
and politics, and the displacement in political
positions that this produces. The first
chapter is the most pedagogical [sneer quotes],
featuring 'a systematic deconstruction of [L A's]
problematic'.
[But try the Appendix first?]
Appendix.
[I read this first as a separate article, still
available in that format, and page numbers refer
to this article ]
Rancière, J. (1974)[1969] 'On the theory of
ideology (the politics of Althusser)'.
Radical Philosophy 7: 2--15.
Once, Marxists used to worry about how to avoid
mysticism in theory, and to link it with
practice. Theoretical practice itself was
seen as a kind of [mysterious] praxis. May
'68 broke with all that, and challenged the status
of the theoretical, not least by 'a mass
ideological revolt' (2). It was no longer
enough for Marxism to simply assert its own
rigour. All participants had to choose a
revolutionary or counterrevolutionary stance.
The significance of LA's work soon emerged as less
radical than it looked. It offered no
understanding of student revolt. It came to
serve revisionism by defending conventional
academic knowledge: this was the real solidarity
between its theory and its practice in
politics. The key is the analysis of
ideology.
L A.s theory argues that in all societies ideology
has a common function to ensure social cohesion by
relating individuals to their allotted
tasks. This first appeared in a Spanish
article, as A Lecture by Althusser [an English
version in Partisan in 1973].
Secondly, ideology is seen as the opposite of
science.
The first argument is designed to attack the
notion of alienation and the hope that eventually
a new transparency would dispel the
mystification. LA argues that all social
structures are opaque necessarily for their
actors, as an effect of social structure.
Ideology will exist even in societies without
classes, since human beings have to be able to do
their allotted tasks. To this general
function is added the effects of class struggle
which overdetermine the hold of ideology.
This is supplemented by an argument that ideology
aims at giving people a mystified representation
of the social system in order to keep them in
their place, but this is 'socially necessary',
although the additional requirements of class
conflicts are far more important [citing a French
reference Theory, Practical theory and
the Formation of Theory, Ideology and
Ideological Struggle --my schoolboy
translation. Now in Althusser, L (1990)
Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of
the Scientists and other essays ].
However, the idea of social cohesion and social
bonds seem to belong to something other than
Marxist analysis. Did Marx not say that the
history of mankind is the history of class
struggle? We seem to have shifted back to
Comte or Durkheim. There is some mythical
'social group' outlined here. LA even goes
on to say that the first example of general
ideology is religion! To see ideology as
having both a general and class function indicates
that two conceptual systems are at work here, one
Marxist one bourgeois. LA attempts to
articulate them by putting the general theory
first, but claiming that this general theory is
still Marxist, that he has derived it somehow from
the Marxist concept of class and the generation of
ideology [this is so even in the specific notion
of ideology in general in the isas essay?]
This involves a new notion of social structure,
something separate from class divisions, and not
as the effects of the relations of
production. We can see how these class
divisions work in constituting apparently separate
social features by analyzing fetishism. In
R's own bit in Reading Capital, fetishism
was seen as both the manifestation and
dissimulation of the relations of production, but
it is necessary to add that the antagonistic
elements of the relations of production also
appear, concealing the opposition between capital
and labour, disguised by the apparent similarity
of sources of revenue. The fact that
contradictions are hidden shows the class nature
of this process. If we leave this out, we
are left with an argument that all social
structures have necessarily hidden parts, that
they dissimulate. To extend this beyond
class societies, however is unwarranted—it leaves
it outside of Marxist theory and thus open to the
influence of metaphysics, especially notions of
'the cunning of reason'.
LA's dualism in arguments about ideology seem like
an extension of Marx's own analysis of the twofold
nature of production, especially its socially
determined nature together, the result of labour
in general, with its specifically capitalist
exploitation of labour power. But connecting
arguments at the economic level to the
superstructural denies their relative
autonomy. We run the risk of someone
applying it to politics as well, with some sort of
political structure, a State always being
required, with definite political functions,
before the specific one emerging in
capitalism. There is this danger in
LA. He runs the risk of seeing ideology as
natural.
LA weasels around this by using forms such as 'as
if' to disguise his actual assertion that the
origin of ideology lies in society itself.
This is a Kantian kind of modesty. Using
terms like that actually conceal political
functions under modesty.
LA runs the risk of analyzing capitalism not as
centrally based on ideology, but as possessing
class ideologies, with ideology as not a
necessary field of struggle, but one of the
participants in the struggle. This further
leads to an argument that contrasts ideology as a
weapon of the ruling class, with science as a
weapon of the ruled. Ideology can never be a
system of knowledge, or even the basis of
one.
However, this is really 'the function of the
dominant ideology ', and not the function of all
ideologies. LA introduces class struggle
only through the development of the
ideology/science split, and this leads to another
problem—'Difference [between science and ideology]
has become contradiction'(4). This is in
fact another old metaphysical operation.
Ideologies are never seen as contradictory
in themselves , but only ever feature articulated
differences and oppositions [a bit like Hall and
Jacques on Thatcherism]: again the ideological
struggle which produces major contradictions has
been erased. Instead, we have a metaphysical
distinction between science and its other, akin to
'the realms of the true and false'.
We can see how this works in an actual political
analysis, drawing on L A's texts on the problem of students,
and his Marxism and Humanism. The
first reflected a split between the pcf and the
arguments developed by the National Union of
French Students. The Party simply wanted
more and better [more accessible?] universities,
while the unions were questioning the teaching
situation itself, qualitatively, through the
notion of alienation. LA was trying to
correct this analysis: but he did not start with
an analysis of the university.
Instead of seeing class divisions between teachers
and students, LA focused on the content of
knowledge, and how it can reveal the split between
science and ideology. The argument is based
on a division between technical and social
divisions of labour in Marx. Again this
replaces a specific class struggle with a general
function necessary to all social structures, or at
least those in modern societies. However,
Marx's intention was different, to explain
production as necessarily two-fold, as general and
as socially defined. This is to be read as
'a mere formal distinction corresponding to two
ways of conceptualising the same process' (5),
'aspects of a single division', which implicate
technical reproduction in social reproduction.
LA sees it as a real distinction, however, with
technical divisions of labour being determined
only by technical necessity. But technical
necessity cannot be separated from relations of
production. Indeed, technical functioning depends
on the reproduction of the relations of
production. The argument actually works
backwards, and LA is really arguing explicitly
that universities are central to every modern
society, implying that specific levels of
development of productive forces exclusively
produce technical divisions, a dangerous
flirtation after all with the notion of evolution
and linear development, specifically criticised
elsewhere by LA. He seems to be agreeing
after all that science or rationality imposes its
own requirements. This is dangerously close
to slogans about the crucial 'needs of the
economy' or 'modernization.'
This coincides with the French Party shifting
towards alliances and a reforming role rather than
'the revolutionary necessity to destroy the
bourgeois relations of production'.
Technical progress is seen as a good aspect of
modern societies. However, such requirements
always serve a class, in this case 'the labour
aristocracy and intellectual cadres' who are
increasingly represented in the Party. What
we have in effect is 'the defence of the hierarchy
of "skills"'. LA is supporting this 'opportunist
ideology of revisionism'. In this way, metaphysics
assists revisionism, specifically by seeing
universities as representatives of science,
leaving militant students as representatives of
the other. This explains the appeal of LA's
defence of the university, its '"obviousness"'.
Apart from anything else, it claims that 'science
is automatically on the side of the revolution',
while ideology with its half truths is always
reactionary. LA does not and cannot explain
why science is always subversive in this way,
however. We do need a Marxist science of
social formations, but this can't be extended to
science in general. The reality of teaching
science in universities shows this. It
features positivism [acknowledged by LA to be
fair] , and also a particular social structure
involving 'the type of institutions; selection
mechanisms; relations between students and staff'
(6). The environment is ideological, the
very institutions and the forms of transmission.
It is the case that the so-called human sciences
can be seen as openly ideological, revealing the
class origins of systems of knowledge. But
their ideological role does not mean that they
lack scientificity. Instead, they adopt
bourgeois ideology. We should not be
confronting them with the demands of proper
science, but opposing them with 'the proletarian
ideology of Marxism-Leninism'
There is no need for a split between science and
ideology in this analysis. The divisions of
knowledge, and the forms in which it is
institutionalized are the important issues, 'the
examination system, the organization of
departments—everything which embodies the
bourgeois hierarchy of knowledge'. Ideology
is not just a collection of discourses, but 'a
power organised in a number of institutions'[the
basis of the claim that R invented isas?].
Ideology doesn't just operate in the
imaginary. Ideological struggle does not
just mean confronting one discourse with another,
including confronting spontaneous student ideology
with rigorous Marxism. These struggles only
reinforce bourgeois ideology's conception of
knowledge.
It is wrong to see the struggle in terms of an
abstract science confronting abstract
ideology. Universities actually select from
science and produce objects of knowledge.
This is a form of appropriation of scientific
knowledge, 'and these are class forms of
appropriation'. Systems of discourse, together
with their institutions and traditions 'constitute
the very essence of bourgeois ideology'. In
universities, science is articulated with
ideology, precisely in dominant ideology.
Knowledge cannot be easily divided into science or
ideology. The content of knowledge clearly
reflects the forms of appropriation. There
is no class division in knowledge, and there is no
established knowledge outside of any institutions,
which are instruments of class rule. All the
characteristics of established knowledge are
determined by the dominant class. Knowledge
itself is at stake in the class struggle, 'and,
like State power, must be destroyed'. Universities
must be 'the objective of a proletarian
struggle'. They are not neutral sites.
The issue is how a scientific knowledge is
constituted and appropriated—'There is a bourgeois
knowledge and a proletarian knowledge', and
splitting science from ideology is not adequate to
grasp this. We need a concrete analysis instead,
not one that starts from abstract notions of
social class which serve to 'ignore class struggle
as it really exists' (7).
How does LA's notion of science conceal class
struggles? The clue lies in the notion of
teaching as transmitting determinate knowledge to
those who do not have it. This division
between teaching and taught is based on the same
dubious notion of technical division of
labour. However, we have a new absolute
difference, not between science and ideology, but
between knowledge and non knowledge. The old
distinction between science and ideology might
actually justify student suspicion towards the
knowledge they encounter—now, that knowledge is
seen as science. Science then reveals itself
as some notion of pure knowledge. Teachers
now should be understood as those attempting to
mediate this pure knowledge of quality, and it is
only naive provocateurs who would want to
criticize them.
We can see the presence of metaphysics in this
argument and also when LA defines philosophy as
itself scientific, when it intervenes in
politics. However, this connection between
philosophy and politics is itself based in the
bourgeois notion of knowledge, although its class
nature is not recognized here. Traditional
philosophy attacks other philosophers in the form
of a criticism of knowledge, not just as a matter
of error, but related to social and political
power—but this is not understood as a matter of
social classes [Deleuze is a good example] .
As a result, the criticism of knowledge 'is made
in the name of an Ideal of Science' (7), which is
to be contrasted with opinion or illusion.
The philosophical discourse typically asks
questions such as what constitutes
scientificity. Sometimes this is understood
as somehow a request from science itself, wanting
to clarify its terms. In effect, the real
basis of knowledge in the class system is avoided,
and knowledge wants to conceal itself.
Philosophical knowledge is denegated [the very
claim that Rancière was to criticize when Bourdieu
made it!]. It takes an ironic stance towards
knowledge, questioning it but not investigating
its foundations. As a result, this sort of
knowledge is always restored in the end, as
philosophers know when they criticise each
other. It is the same with LA—we doubt
knowledge, only to rescue it as science.
When discussing teaching, LA is quite aware of the
issue of who possesses knowledge. In
classical philosophy, we often find that
questioning the object of knowledge ends by
confirming a subject [such as the Cartesian
cogito]. Philosophy can therefore claim to
take a political stand against 'the possessers of
false knowledge', like theologians or
sophists. This clearly strengthens claims
for dominance, 'hence justifying class domination'
(8). The political demands of classes
excluded from power are represented as a demand
for true knowledge, making this demand looks
universal.
L A.s academic ideology makes this metaphysical
discourse justify teachers in their claims for
dominance. He speaks in their name, adopting
'the class position expressed in revisionist
ideology—that of the labour aristocracy and the
cadres', and therefore justifies his own class
position. Class struggle becomes imaginary,
and helps revisionism and class
collaboration. Marxism has become
opportunism.
The analysis of humanist ideology expresses the
concealment of the class struggle best. It
starts by asking what the function of humanist
ideology is in the USSR, but does not investigate
its class meaning. It is assumed that the
USSR is classless, so we can go ahead and analyze
ideology on its own. The familiar argument
ensues, that ideology is not a science, and that
it helps people adjust to their conditions of
existence.
For LA, socialist humanism disguises a series of
new problems in a classless society, of
organization, development of the productive
forces, anticipation of the disappearance of the
state and new forms of leadership and individual
responsibility. We see that these new
problems and the old arguments about ideology
prevent analysis of the reality of the Soviet
union. LA analyses 'nothing but the image
which Soviet Society presents of itself; or to be
more precise, which the governing class present of
it'. The adequacy of this ideological
discourse is never challenged [the Reply does
challenge it, esp. the notion that the USSR is
classless—this is explained as an error in
misunderstanding the role of the socialist
production system deterministically].
This apparently concrete analysis confirms the
general discussion of ideology inevitably.
Revisionism, however cannot be thought out.
The very notion of the general theory of ideology,
separated from the existence of classes is itself
an account of 'a politics which claims to have got
beyond classes'. The critique of humanism
actually leaves it intact, by basing itself on the
notion of scientificity. The real issue is
what humanism represents politically.
We know that humanism usually ends with protecting
their privileges of specific sets of men: 'Man is
always the Prince or the Bourgeoisie', sometimes
the party leader. However, it can also
become a concept to guide rebellion and protest,
it can function 'as the discourse of a class in
struggle'. Humanism in the USSR has taken
this form. Even Stalinism offers some notion
that 'Man' is the most valuable capital, despite
the claim that the cadres should decide
everything. This humanism can also be seen
as helping to restore capitalism as a state of the
people, but it can also express rebellion of
classes and peoples. It is necessary to
investigate concrete reality, but LA sees humanism
in terms of a general ideological form, something
that helps people serve their proper functions in
the USSR. The task is to make the transition
to communism, and this presents a number of
problems for LA, but he can never see this in
terms of contradiction, and is forced to revert to
terms of bourgeois sociology, a matter of unifying
groups.
We need to return to the original goal, which was
to criticize notions of alienation and
dealienation. The intention was to show that
the world is not transparent to consciousness,
even in classless societies. This was
convenient for the Soviet party and for
revisionism generally. But the real reason
for this error is that LA remains in 'a classic
philosophical problematic' (9). L A's tactic
is to criticize ideologies of alienation by seeing
them as based on a theory of the subject.
But this is only pursued partially, by examining
idealist accounts of consciousness. Ideology
explains the illusion of consciousness, but it is
not just false consciousness but a system of
representations, images and signs, which have an
objective social reality. However, he should
also have looked at social forms in which
struggles are contested. This is also
ideological. Ideology is not just a matter
of inadequate representations, but exists' in
class struggles, not just in discourses', in
institutions or 'what we can call 'ideological
apparatuses'. This would prevent LA from
seeing ideological forms as 'spectral', something
that subjects construct. That account can
never understand contradiction in the Marxist
sense, but remains on metaphysical grounds.
For LA, ideology can only be ended by replacing it
with science, with the disappearance of
illusion—which is clearly impossible. Ideology can
never end in this system, which prevents a
suitable political analysis of how class struggle
produces actual ideologies reflecting class
interests. That analysis would see the end
of class struggle not as some wonderful utopia,
but as the result of successful class struggle:
ideology, like the State, would wither away.
We would need to criticise those claims that
certain regimes have achieved a classless society,
and examine the continued existence of class
struggle in socialist societies, like the Chinese
ideological struggles against bourgeois ideology
and its remnants [very much like L A's own later
analysis here]. Seeing ideology simply a
subjective illusion will not help.
LA's notion of science itself reflects the class
position of intellectuals as petty bourgeois,
squeezed between the bourgeois ideological
apparatus of the university, and the proletariat,
who can be joined only after they have been
rethought, as advocates of science [!]. All
the time intellectuals remain as intellectuals,
they can only participate in proletarian struggle
'in a mythical fashion', uniting their apparent
interests with their own intellectual goals.
An intellectual can adopt proletarian positions
but at the price of 'the denegation of his own
class practice'. In effect this means
adopting a bourgeois take on proletarian politics,
which inevitably means revisionism.
Conditions in France makes this convergence
particularly likely. Petty bourgeois
intellectuals cannot easily access the working
class, because of their integration into bourgeois
ideological dominance, but also because they
cannot pose as or act within the institutions of
or with the representatives of the working
class. Only proper participation can
'guarantee the Marxist rigour of his discourse',
however (10). These conditions lie behind
the transformation of Marxist theory into a
discourse on science. Scientific rigour is a
consolation. However, scientific rigour can
only become progressive if it is not fully
pursued—if it is, it inevitably becomes 'a
bourgeois rigour', a justification for academic
knowledge 'and the authority of the Central
Committee', or justification for counter
revolution.
We know that revolutionary movements need
revolutionary theory, but it is also true, as May
'68 and the cultural revolution [in China] have
taught us, that 'divorced from revolutionary
practice, or revolutionary theory is transformed
into its opposite'.
Afterword (1973)
This was written four years after the main
piece. At the time, it seemed as if the
struggles of 68 had obviously exposed LA, and that
any 'theoretical refutations seemed laughable
compared with the lessons of the struggle'
(10). However, that was an idealism.
Actual struggles clearly transform people's views
much more than theory, but bourgeois ideology and
domination has not been utterly destroyed,
especially the 'university machine', which
continue to police people using scholastic and
theoretical scaffolding to argue that it is wrong
to rebel. There have been some changes,
including the establishment of certain
experimental forms of university as at
Vincennes. This has only transferred the
authority from the teacher to the knowledge, and
ended professorial despotism replacing it with 'an
egalitarian Republic of petty mandarins'.
This has strengthened L A's problematic and
discourse, even though he has receded into the
background [and a pcf student is quoted as being
pleased that selection is reintroduced toexcludse
those of insufficient grasp —the test being
whether people could grasp L A.s problematic of
reading!].
So there is still an ideological struggle going on
between the mass movements and the ideological
apparatuses of the bourgeoisie. Those
apparatuses have got clever by appearing to fight
on the opponent's ground.
Although this original critique of LA is still
relevant, there are new problems which require
rectification. The criticism does seem one
sided, but it was addressing particularly how
Althusserianism was drafted in to support
revisionism after May '68. This is a
'specific articulation' of L A's work,
representing the specific position of Marxist
scholars faced with ideological revolt.
There were other ways in which LA's work was taken
up politically, even as a left-Althusserianism,
which should lead to maoism. The right wing
readings were dominant at the time, and even the
left wing readings were opposed by communist youth
organisations.
LA has also now undertaken self criticism, and
broken with theoreticism. However, this new
political emphasis does not overcome the effects
of the classic texts. Even the new notion of
philosophy is practice has produced no actual
affect on class struggles, because it still
ignores political problems. Overall, the
self criticism 'was really more of a denegation of
the foundations and the political effects of
Althusserianism'(11). It is the concepts
criticized above the other real rational kernel of
L A.s ideology.
Nevertheless, the later contributions do now
recognize that there are multiple sciences and
ideologies, and that a spontaneous philosophy of
scientists is ideological. However, the main
arguments remain—these multiple versions simply
arise from a complex mechanism of
representation. The class struggle is still
seen as a component of one of these
representations of practice. Scientific
practice itself, and the analysis of it, is not
clarified.
The isas essay does introduce new ideas, and
acknowledges the impact of the Chinese cultural
revolution and May '68. But the ideas are
not connected back to the mode of
production. They are represented in the text
as a surprise arising from research, although the
mass movement clearly revealed the workings of the
educational ISA very clearly. L A's
suggestion that political parties and trade unions
are isas, and that the class function of education
can be somehow combined with the glorification of
science and schools can only be seen as an 'ironic
discourse'. New lessons can be drawn from
practice, but they need not challenge underlying
models.
The point of criticizing LA is not to knock down a
great man, but rather to show how ideological
mechanisms constrain the discourse of
intellectuals. It is not that LA simply did
not realise the connections between his theory and
relations of power at the time. There is a
general relation to power in the practice of
intellectuals. It was not just LA who ran
seminars where students interrogate concepts, or
attempt to authorise them, challenge their
identity, challenge those ideas that seem out of
place, displaying 'a vast network of philosophy's
police mentality'. These are not LA's
intentions, and he is no more responsible for them
than capitalists are for capitalism. 'The
apprentices of bourgeois and knowledge are trained
in the universe of discourse where words, the
argument, ways of questioning, deduction are
prescribed by the discursive forms—which are those
of the repressive practices of power'. This
is a form of 'police - reason', a 'network of
constraints in which the half-wits of academic
philosophy romp, free from all problems'.
It was vital at the time to insist that
subordinate classes can produce their own
rebellious ideologies, without waiting for
permission. May '68 lead to a war against
spontaneism on all sides, identifying a missing
vanguard, party or science or discipline. It
was necessary to defend 'the right of the masses
to autonomous speech and action'. This is
not just a choice between spontaneous or
disciplined discourse, but a matter of
heterogeneous modes of production of
ideology. Bourgeois ideology is routinely
produced by the ideological apparatuses,
proletarian ideology emerges from struggle,
sometimes with other classes, against 'all forms
of bourgeois exploitation and
domination'(12). This must necessarily take
a fragmentary form, operating at different levels
and advancing unevenly. Proletarian ideology
is never a full summary of alternative values: it
takes the form of stopped assembly lines, mocking
authority, fighting against scientific
innovations, developing working class access to
Chinese universities. There is no fully
developed complementary philosophy or conception
of justice.
The usual accounts of proletarian ideology
simplify matters such as proletarian discipline or
solidarity, or want to impose a particular text:
all these are designed to channel spontaneity and
avoid anarchism, restore law and order. In
Stalinism, proletarian ideology was defined in
this way, amounting in practice to a series of
reasons for obeying and keeping discipline. This
is the same source of ambiguity found in the
science/ideology couple, which also apparently
explains the failure of spontaneous
rebellion. These '"proletarian" phantasms'
need to be swept away by practice.
[There are some interesting notes, including 14a
that talks about what it is that makes science
serve the interests of the bourgeoisie. In the
first place, science is never developed and taught
in a pure logical way. This opens the way to
criticism, even in mathematics, that the very
propositions, proofs, fields of application and
methods can be a matter of class struggle.
Apparently, some Communist Chinese mathematicians
who did self criticism admitted to practising 'an
academic's science, looking only for personal
prestige'(12). Ranciere goes on to argue
that it is the issue of how science is practiced,
how it is based on a system of division of labour
which keeps science out of the hands of the
masses, and restricts it to experts.
Proletarian science means developing something
that is not just the business of specialists but
which is accessible to the masses.
17A discusses denegation, apparently used first by
Freud 'to designate an unconscious denial masked
by a conscious acceptance, or vice versa'. A
criticism cannot conceal 'the strengthened
affirmation. The affirmation is
"misrecognised" as criticism'(14)].
back now to the sequence in the book
Chapter 1 A Lesson in Orthodoxy
Both characters in the Reply are a bit
odd. John Lewis is not well known. LA
makes his criticism by speaking in the name of
Marxism-Leninism, of orthodoxy. This already
gives a false impression of the unity between, say
Marx and Engels, or denies the contradictions in
Lenin once he came to power.
There are other elisions. For example does
making history mean the same thing to both?
John Lewis is supposed to be a spokesman for the
bourgeois humanism, although LA actually confuses
what the bourgeois said about the human mind with
the view that man makes history. The real
issue was what is meant by the term 'man', and
this led to philosophical anthropology, which is
often materialist in the sense of giving a
determining role to the sensory apparatus.
The bourgeois project therefore became one of
controlling the sensory apparatus, as in Panopticon
[the debt to Foucault is acknowledged in a note,
4]. The same idea was shared by French
revolutionaries! This continuity is what
Marx criticizes when he talks about freedom,
equality, property and Bentham. It is why
early radicals objected to the combination of the
wage system with domination.
This understanding is what underlies the Theses
on Feuerbach—especially the remarks that men
are indeed subject to disciplining circumstances
and education, and that these circumstances and
the educator himself must be changed. This
is the revolutionary rupture with bourgeois
thinking in Marx—who should arrange the world and
educate the educators? LA has also misquoted
Feuerbach who never believed there was a simple
essence of man as the origin of history, rather
that human essence is at the heart of Hegel's
history, and this notion of essence is
misconceived as natural in origin. Marx
wanted to restore a historical dimension to
Feuerbach's subject of history, instead of
sticking with the history of
representations. In fact, Marx never refers
to Feuerbach's category of the subject: rather he
points out that F's subject is specifically
German, meaning that it is often people on the
sidelines of the major developments of class
struggle who require humanist philosophy.
This means that humanism is always a marginal
ideology, arising whenever there are discrepancies
in the class struggle. Marx is really putting
historical active subjects against contemplative
and interpretive ones, empirical individuals,
concrete men rather than Man.
LA must surely know this, because he has read the
texts, but he acts as if he had forgotten what he
knew about Feuerbach—because he doesn't want to
know. The real thrust of Marx's thought is
to contrast the historical and the atemporal, the
way historical forms are turned into atemporal
features of nature. LA sees in this the
dangers of historicism. If Marx is
ambiguous, LA turns to Marxism-Leninism.
LA wants to promote the materialist over the
dialectical theses. For him, history has no
privileged status: it's not true that it's more
transparent because men have made it. He
argues that men have not made the natural
world. However the argument really is
whether scientists can ever get to data outside
the design of their experiments or
hypotheses. By making this a bourgeois
ideology, LA clears the ground for philosophy, in
the bit attacking Vico, and arguing that men are
always separated from history by an illusion that
they understand it. In fact, Marx argued the
opposite, that technology reveals the active
relation of man to nature and therefore '"lays
bare the process of the production of the social
relations of his life and of the mental
conceptions that flow from them"'[apparently in Capital
1]. Of course, anyone can interpret Marx,
although LA is claiming to be a champion of
orthodoxy.
The point about ruling class ideologies about
nature has long been understood in the critique of
religion, even in Feuerbach. It also seems
odd to ignore the historical experience of the
masses in their dealings with various lords,
landlords, police officers and so on. Surely
ordinary men can see that the social relations of
a mode of production are connected to the material
forms of production? LA has got a rather
bourgeois view of the masses here, who had just
seem to live in history, without struggle.
History needs to be studied by specialist party
intellectuals. We see again this notion that
there is a division between working men who
produce, and men of leisure who provide the
theory. If the masses make history, it is
only after being firmly guided by the Party to
penetrate their existing illusions.
A hierarchical order of the university was
justified by LA in the concept of the technical
division of labour. LA did retract this
slightly after 1968, in the guise of a discussion
of scientific understanding. The intention
was still clear, to preserve even Marxist
philosophy as the preserve of academic
specialists, a goal 'diametrically opposed to
Marx's' (11). This is driven by a residual
fear that a proper workers revolt would make
philosophy redundant producing 'a serious job
crisis on the philosophical market' (12).
Marx had already proclaimed the end of philosophy
and philanthropy in the Theses, but this
is rendered as a new philosophical practice.
Marx actually proposed a politics of theoretical
statements. He obviously does defend the
findings of theory, as in the defence of the
notion of surplus value, or even in his insistence
[in the Marginal Notes] that we should
start with social production not 'man'. But
this is to be seen as offering a new materialism
based on the history of production, against more
abstract materialisms as in [philosophical
anthropology, surely?] natural science.
This means that L A's distinction between
materialist and dialectical theses 'makes no
sense'. Instead of arguing that we can only
know what exists, Marx is arguing that the
consciousness of man is determined by their social
being. Knowledge does not emerge from being
in the old materialist way, the bourgeois world
view, the bourgeois materialist tradition [which
is deterministic, the origin of ideas in material
events etc]. The new materialism opposes the
split between idealism and materialism.
There is no need for a philosophy to arbitrate
between the different claims.
Indeed, what is the role of philosophy? It
tells us that the masses make history, but 'do we
really need philosophy to tell us this?'
(13). Marx's scientific propositions can
also function philosophically as LA suggests, but
what's the worth of doing so? Is it that
philosophy somehow produces a surplus by working
on these concepts and slogans? In this, LA
produces a familiar character, 'indispensable to
any extortion of surplus: the foreman'.
So it is not just a debate about whether man or
the masses make history, rather how man is to be
conceived, concretely, against the old materialism
of senses. In fact, it's Lenin who coins the
term masses, although he remained suspicious
because it seemed to imply a difference between
masses and leaders. The notion that the
masses make history is actually Maoist, and Mao
actually asserts that the people drive world
history, no less. This would be too Hegelian
and humanist for LA, who modifies it. Even
here, the whole argument is about the competence
of the masses, not what drives history. It
was an important slogan in the Chinese civil war,
to reject fascism by arguing that 'it is the
oppressed who are intelligent, and the weapons of
deliberation will emerge from their intelligence'
(14). This extended to supporting the
students against their professors. It is a
new contribution. It clearly challenges the
old view that the working classes only develop an
economist consciousness. Chinese workers
showed their creative and political power, and
this actually challenges mechanistic Marxism, the
laws of the development of productive forces, and
the old authoritarianism of the dictatorship of
the proletariat. This Maoist conception is not
just a philosophical thesis. It rejects the
notion that the oppressed can only triumph through
the assistance of philanthropists or
philosophers. This is a new conception of
the intelligence of the masses, hinted at in the Theses.
It requires philosophers to seriously rethink
their practice, knowledge, and social
position. It questions the value of Marxist
science in explaining events. LA can only
respond by turning this conception back into
classic philosophy, and discussing the notion of a
process without a subject: Mao's challenge becomes
a move in a philosophical game, the old favourite
critique of the subject, which was already well
underway. LA's specific move was originally
welcomed as suiting the new times: it had
political implications.
We can see this see if we penetrate beneath the
apparently neutral struggle between LA and John
Lewis. LA's disguise as the anonymous
spokesperson of Marxism-Leninism helps conceal the
politics. The British Communist Party was
insignificant, and little would actually follow
politically from the debate anyway, but it is
different with other communists like
Gransci. Those leaders are critiqued in a
different way, philosophically, as in Reading
Capital [quite a good critique of Gramsci's
humanism I thought. However, R says that
there was a role played by the factory councils,
as well as by Italian philosophers like Croce.]
John Lewis is seen as nothing more than a double
for Sartre, but Sartre's politics are never
seriously discussed, especially the issue of
whether intellectuals could have a political role
outside the Party, and how they might relate to
the working class, how objective research might
link to political combat and so on. Since
Sartre, communist intellectuals have coped by
developing the arrangement 'we leave the Party
alone in questions of politics, and it leaves us
alone when it comes to epistemology and other
issues of theoretical practice' (18).
Existentialism was on the verge of raising
questions about the drift towards dictatorship in
the Soviet union. The existentialists did
engage in interesting debates with the pcf.
Sartre's work did encourage the insubordinates
during the Algerian war, the rebellious students
of May '68, the establishment of new newspapers to
let intellectuals and the masses interact.
However, these matters cannot be discussed by LA,
because the Party comes out of it very
badly. In exchange for this tactical
silence, the Party is prepared to tolerate LA's
philosophical 'pranks' (19) which at least help to
recruit leftists. L A's role is what makes
his particular Reply significant.
Yet there are clearly political lines being
developed, against any notion that the masses
themselves might be able to make history, that
they can determine history. For LA, saying
things like this would only distract the masses
and disappoint them: their role is to get on with
forming class organizations, the trade unions and
the Party. L A's points repeat bourgeois
folk wisdom. LA has helped to bring some
Maoist slogans into philosophy, in a nice
domesticated form, as an academic debate.
The fight against humanism is 'only a screen': the
real fight has been against anything which
challenges the authority of the Party and of his
philosophy, whether it's Maoists or rebellious
students.
Chapter two. A Lesson in Politics.
[This is an account of the twists and turns of
radical politics in the tumultuous period of the
60s and 70's. As should be clear already,
there was a great debate inside the pcf as a
result of Kruschev's denunciation of Stalin at the
20th Congress of the Soviet party, emerging splits
between the USSR and China, and the emergence of
all sorts of the apparently spontaneous revolts
outside the party, of which the student revolts in
May '68, and the occupation of the Lip factory in
1973 were particularly challenging. The
Italian Party was also developing a new social
democratic line that was to become Euro
communism. In the middle of all this, a
number of communist party theoreticians attempted
to develop particular responses. One
tendency was to revive the writings of the young
Marx in order to explain cultural events as the
result of alienation—the humanist tendency— which
could attract other leftists and critics.
Stalinism was denounced as a mere cult of
personality. Various spontaneist and
anarcho-syndicalist movements were accused of
indiscipline and the unwitting reproduction of
bourgeois ideology of the individual: working
class participants were suspected of 'economism',
that is the pursuit of their immediate interests
in better wages or conditions. LA's own
approach has been demonstrated—a return to
orthodoxy in the form of a reading of Marx that
suggested it was a science, which gave the party
intellectuals a role, and which also dismissed
humanist variations. Ranciere was an
Althusserian at first, then located somewhere
between 68 spontaneism, and Maoist cultural
revolution.
It is not worth summarising all the details.
LA is to be accused of supporting all those trends
which opposed spontaneism and cultural
revolution. It is as usual a very harsh
critique, and sometimes a hilariously sarcastic
one, one that's almost impossible to test out
unless you know the particular details of the
organisations and struggles of the period..
LA is never really allowed much consideration
anyway. R says that 'we must distinguish
between Althusser's politics and the politics of
Althusserianism; Althusser may very well always
have kept his distance from the latter, but that
very distance was a political position…
"theoreticism"… was an actual
partisanship'(24), which is either a subtle
hermeneutic reading or a paranoid one. It is
actually apparent from some of the stuff below,
that L A.s work was also subversive of the party
line at certain moments. A critical reading
of it is precisely what led R to develop his own
stance].
The theoretical investigations, especially in the
core work, was designed to transform the
Party. Liberal tendencies had been opposed
by the excesses of Stalin [actually Zhdanov] in
creating a dogmatic socialist culture. The
only alternative seemed to be liberal
eclecticism. At least there was a spaces for
L A's project to reexamine Marxist
philosophy. The point was to found a new
rational politics, especially based on a
particular notion of the dialectic in Marx and
Lenin, which seem to be having such an effect in
China and Cuba. Theoreticism did not abandon
politics, but claimed rather it took a detour,
eventually to revive local politics with
philosophical inputs, and to relate to events
elsewhere in the world, especially those that
seemed to operate blindly and empirically
[Debray's line on Cuba which fiercely opposed
theoretical debating in favour of action].
It was not clear what such theoretically supported
politics might look like in the actual texts of
Marx and Lenin, however. Philosophizing was
needed.
There were also themes detectable in For Marx
to restore philosophy against those who saw them
as irrelevant in the face of politics. It
was necessary also to defend the place of
communist intellectuals in 'the university
elite'(26). To do this, it is necessary to
oppose reductionist readings of historical
materialism. To stave off spontaneism, it is
necessary to distinguish between science and
philosophy, and this is also necessary to counter
those who were seeing Marxism as just another
ideology. LA sees these as an attack on
'leftism', but borrows the definition offered by
the Soviet communist party, who saw proletarian
culture and science as inspired by leftism.
Marxist philosophy had to be seen as autonomous,
and it had to be provided with new concepts.
Anyone opposing the relative autonomy of
philosophy, or the other levels, could be seen as
operating with 'the concept of a bad totality'
(27). [Among the accused is Gramsci, as well as
Lukacs]. This grouped together a number of
opponents 'under the single model of
subjectivism', and this could then be seen as just
the flip side of economism, engendering an endless
alternation between the two.
The philosophical attack on leftism leads to a
political intervention. This takes the form
of developing a system of differences—such as
science and ideology, epistemological
breaks. This can help dump Marx's early
work. However, LA generalizes from the
specific situation of needing to oppose Stalinist
reductionism to found an entire politics claiming
to actualise Marxist philosophy. This leads
to a break with the notion of politics as
systematizing the ideas of the masses, and as
representing class power [which R suggests is also
a break with Lenin]. Individual leaders like
Stalin and Zhdanov went astray because they did
not have a suitable theoretical tradition, and so
they were left flapping in a void, in
ideology. Anything that denies suitable
theory runs this risk.
[R goes on to suggest that even in the worst of
Stalinism, there were achievements, such as the
victories of Stalingrad and Nanjing, and
successful strikes of French miners. These
people did not operate in a void, but gained 'the
positivity borne by the manifest sense of a
struggle' (29). Those struggles should have
restored the primacy of class struggle above any
notions that party intellectuals might have
something in common with conventional
politicians. Even crude notions like a
proletarian science helped this sense of
positivity. Objections to this crudity are
merely petty bourgeois quibbles, from party
intellectuals unable to adopt working class
positions. All this is lost in a simple
abstract division between science and ignorance by
LA. Actual history is complex and
subjective, not a matter of rational politics
based on analysis of levels. It follows that
Marx's dialectic must be rediscovered from
examining these struggles. By not doing so,
LA had no alternative but to 'invent theoretical
solutions to problems that political practice
could not solve' (30), working from above.
The relative autonomy of levels was in fact 'the
new figure of utopia', a substitute for self
emancipation. No wonder LA has only largely
appealed to academics: 'it is not at all to change
the world, but one more tool to interpret it
with'(31) {nice, but a bit repetitive}].
There is an odd link between the notion of the
history without a subject, and the constant
valuing and of individual heroes, especially of
Lenin, and, of course of Marx the great
explorer. This residual individualism led to
the defence of the individualistic research in
universities. LA himself claim this heroic
status in discovering that schools were isas, even
though radical students had already demonstrated
that well enough.
Political practice is supposed to unite the
various elements, but they had to be grasped
theoretically first. While we were waiting,
the Party could be relied upon to provide 'a
provisional moral code' (32). This avoided
an earlier struggle that intellectuals had with
commitment to the party. But the same time,
the party could only deal with short term issues,
while theorists were set to develop the the long
term plans.
Why did the pcf accept L A's project?
Officially, they saw no problem with what Marx
actually meant, since that was expressed in the
party of the working class. The only ones
interested in rereading Marx were those who had
left the party or never joined it.
Philosophical readings could challenge the
authority of the Party. The challenge of
spontaneism seem to suggest the need for an
organisation, but not for a philosophy.
There had been an argument offered by Kautsky that
the working classes needed to have consciousness
imported, and members of the UEC [university
students, communist] were interested in using this
to discuss party positions. LA policed this
with his own project, by arguing it was one of
several misguided projects. The pcf was content to
accept the new line in the Soviet party after the
20th Congress rather than working at its own
theoretical position.
However, this was threatened by the UEC who had
become interested in 'Italian' variants of what it
meant to pursue a peaceful transition to
socialism, how the majority of the population had
to be won over, how they had to be seen as united
by being alienated. This was seen as a break
'to the right', and was met by a break to the left
turning on maoism and the critique of Soviet
revisionism. This forced a theoretical
debate on the Party. L A.s work helped to
critique the philosophy of the Italians—its major
role in defending the Party. It was not
accepted immediately, but became more popular
after growing threats from the UEC and other
humanists. Intellectuals were particularly
likely to be attracted by the argument that they
should be given autonomy.
Other events cemented the alliance. L A.s
work on the materialist dialectic seem to agree
with the Chinese line that's contradictions could
be displaced [away from class, more towards the
struggle of marginal oppressed people]. The
pcf questioned him about this, and had to
argue that there was no relation between
theoretical positions and political lines.
He was interested in maoism only to grasp its
underlying Marxist principles—actual maoists had
probably misread them directly as political
texts. However, LA realised that he would
have to identify 'with the immediate interests of
the Party' (36), and its struggles with the
splitters.
In the critique of humanism, it looks like
subjectivism needs to be critiqued by theory, and
this is an acceptable way to critique humanist
communists. However, there were constant
challenges arising from political episodes like
the Algerian war or the student uprising, and
these also had to be seen off—in theory. For
R, this 'reveals the complicity between the
illness and the doctor' (37) [can't quite see
why—threats to the Party had to be dignified as
theoretical so they could be seen off by theory?]
For various reasons, the discussion about
education became crucial. LA opposed
rebellious students. This is actually his
only political intervention, and it was crucial in
showing the links between his philosophy and pcf
politics. Rebellious students were
particularly threatening because they challenged
the whole notion of education and its relation to
the existing order, and even talked about
differences between producers and consumers of
knowledge: a 'left' attack. The UEC had
already gained some credibility in the struggle
against the Algerian war, and now wanted to
exercise its newfound power in its own
struggle. They challenged the point of
academic knowledge, the forms of the transmission
of knowledge, including '(lecture courses which
inured students to being docile)' (38),
individualism, and 'the arbitrary nature of
exams'. They saw themselves as alienated and
made dependent financially, and demanded student
wages. This was more of an exploration
rather than a programme, but it lead to a
structuralist response in L A.s work, as a
response to the challenge of knowledge and its
links with power.
Intellectuals were divided by the structuralist
challenge as much as by 'Gaullist
"technocratism"'. It is this division that
somehow brought together quite different thinkers
like Foucault, Lacan and Althusser.
Structuralism seem to open up a new kind of
politics, to do with the relations between
knowledge and power. This is sheer relief
compared to the old dilemmas about whether to
oppose war or get committed to the party. A
proposal for a student strike prompted L A's
particular reaction—apparently, a student
spokesman had also asked awkward questions about
knowledge and power in a seminar run by Bourdieu
and Passeron, and LA saw that is an unwelcome
oppression against researchers. He was to
reassert the Party line on education, such as
scholarships, and to replace the idea of the
division between students and lecturers as one
between science and ideology, knowledge and
ignorance. His intervention was clearly very
important for him, and it also showed the active
political possibilities of L A.s position.
LA went on to develop the science/ideology split
as a form of 'authoritarian leftism' (41), and
helped deepen the split between Marxist scholars
and petty bourgeois students, serious and
frivolous politics. It also implied that any
intellectual authority should be accepted.
It helped revive the particular centre at Ulm
[Cercle d'Ulm] which saw a new point in struggling
with the UEC. [R was on LA's side at that
time?]
It is tempting to see L A.s work as 'the simple
ideology of a student aristocracy', who saw
themselves as trainee professors, were used to
competition, and were liable to see the critique
of individualism and the advocacy of collective
work 'as the reveries of illiterate
minds'(41). For the financially independent,
the notion of student wages seemed absurd.
Financial security made it possible to focus on
science as the only important thing compared to
the petty grievances of lived experience [sounds
very much like Bourdieu here]. However, this
is not the only factor. It was never a
struggle between theoreticians and students, but
between theoreticians themselves. There were
dubious connections between collective work groups
and modern capitalist human relations [does R
still believe this?] . Focusing on daily
life seemed romantic. Demanding to be
involved in theoretical debates looked
democratic. L A.s position seemed to offer
an independent notion of being an intellectual,
escaping daily life and its ideological
effects. Structuralism seem to offer a new
theoretical power. Nevertheless, all this
was still confined to 'a professorial ideology'
(46) ), and thus a compromise with the notion of
hierarchies of knowledge. A spokesman from
Ulm particularly denounced UEC demands as trivial
and irrelevant, compared to learned commentary and
theoretical discussion.
R and his colleagues campaigned against the main
lines of the UEC, and found that this lead them to
agree with the pcf. It looked like a an
honest reassertion of Marxist principles, for
example on the limits of the wage system.
However, events in China were more unsettling, and
Mao also had a theoretical appeal. There was
still no Maoist tendency exactly, but Mao's texts
required a theoretical effort. Ironically,
the pcf supported the UEC's Italian line as a
possible defence against maoism. However,
while the struggles made student politics look
particularly relevant, the pcf was also organizing
to make sure its delegates dominated the
UEC. This changed the rules of the game for
R and his colleagues, since the Party was then
able to purge the UEC, and subsequently demanded
'cold orthodoxy' (45). The choice was to
abandon L A.s notion of the autonomy of
science, or to stick with philosophical
commitments and be isolated. However,'the
Althusserian machine' had also stimulated an
interest in theory to guide present practices, not
long term ones, and a new Centre was
constructed. This was tantamount to allowing
militants to group around theoretical formation,
becoming a kind of party within the UEC.
Then LA and his associates at Ulm produced Reading
Capital. This looked like a political
critique of the pcf and its economism. The
radical breaks between modes of production looked
like it was advocating violent revolution after
all. However, what resulted was only 'the
creation of a new field of academic inquiry'
(47). However, a subversive path emerged
again, based on the autonomy of theory. This
was the familiar argument that the agents of
production can never fully understand how their
practices produces illusions. In fact this
is barely an advance on Kautsky. This was
useful to denounce the spontaneism of students,
but it was also a critique of the party's claim to
be an authority on the basis of the unity between
theory and practice [this also denies the
gramscian notion of the collective intellectual or
the organic intellectual]. LA gets close to
drawing some of these implications himself, even
while condemning critics of the university.
These points lead to an autonomy for Marxist
theory and its texts, but LA uses this to prop up
the pcf line again. It is necessary before
you gain freedom to subject yourself to the
discipline of science. This appealed at
first because it seemed to resolve disputes
between different lines. It solved a quest
for authority outside the party without engaging
in the 'eclectic blabber that… was regarded
as the height of "Marxist" culture'(48) [like the
designer Marxism in Britain?] This was an
authority that would free intellectuals from
guilt, requiring no class submission or betrayal,
although excepting professorial repression.
This was a good side of L A.s work, even leading
to maoism, and it gained support from the
Sino-Soviet split and the general challenge to
party authority. It seemed to Maoist
students as if defending theory would somehow
benefit the Chinese.
UEC militants liked this, but had more trouble
with a critique of humanism, especially since the
pcf had long adopted a stance of 'reusing the
cultural and scientific heritage of the
bourgeoisie' (49), although LA distinguished two
sorts of humanism. A residual worry was what
would happen to the party, and to political
practice. LA ended a pluralistic toleration
of intellectuals in the pcf and 'confiscated
theory' (50), and some critics found this
authoritarian, and also worried about the absence
of any examples from workers practice, especially
in Balibar. The split between theory and
practice was clear, and this is how a purist
theory has political effects. The Ulm circle got
increasingly critical of the party on theoretical
grounds, especially with its attack on humanism
which was less prudent them L A's original.
However, the real change was the development of a
Maoist UJC [union of young communists]. Thus
exploited splits between L A.s followers, who
joined the different factions. Althusserianism is
much more a theory of education rather than
political practice, and thus must preserve
educational hierarchies and forms. It was
also forced to staying with the pcf on the promise
of regenerating it. The UJC offered a
radical alternative, although it had compromises
of its own and was still ultimately a
philosophical politics, unable to challenge
scientific authority and power. One faction
was no longer willing to support the party
short-term, without theoretical
justification. A trotskyite faction emerged
after the 'repression of empirical
politics'. Maoist adherence to the power of
marxist science lead to a split with the other
anti authoritarian students. The events of
May '68 would deepen the splits, and isolate the
theorists
A political line had developed from Reading
Capital that the student rebellion in
France was ideological, untimely, and wrong in
that it did not involve the working class.
This was actually supported by the professors, 'a
class in love with every revolution except that of
its students' (53). This 'ouvrierist' attack
by solid bourgeois on petty bourgeois was also
supported by L A's legacy—repression by science is
kin to repression by the proletariat, the petty
bourgeois have to be stripped of their illusions
and proletarianized. The issue of actual power and
its effects was never addressed. Instead
there was a theoretical discussion about rational
politics. Organization was simply seen as a
technical instrument, and the issue was to use it
for the right ends. It is a model of
'enlightened despotism'that ideally suits the
modern university. The UJC developed a
similar hierarchy, and maoism was seen as a matter
of absolute authority. This notion of
neutral political organization prevented an
understanding of how organizations have their own
power effects.
LA took the same line on the Chinese cultural
revolution as the founders of the UJC, as an
ideological revolution helping to respond to the
threats of capitalism. However, this could
not openly be said since the pcf was pro
Soviet. However, the Chinese cultural
revolution eventually came to be seen as a serious
critique of the role of the educator, and LA had
to admit this finally in his own piece On the
Cultural Revolution. He saw the time
as not yet ripe for cultural revolution, and it is
true that the events in China did not spread to
other communist parties. However, since the
Chinese seemed to attack the whole notion of a
guiding philosopher, it never could operate at the
right moment.
LA eschewed further political interventions in
favour of his self criticism, admitting that he
had forgotten politics and practice.
Philosophy was now to serve politics, to be
partisan [this was why the more theoretical
structuralist bits of Reading Capital—R's
bits--were omitted in the new edition]. R sees
this as 'mockery, surely or a dark sense of
humour' (56). Partisanship was a slogan of
Zhdanov era, which LA had begun by reacting
against!
Chapter three A lesson in Self - criticism
[By now, I am starting to get the hang of R's
general critical themes applied to LA:
1. We should read LA's arguments, even those
of Lenin and other heroes of the Soviet party, as
really being rooted in particular political
debates and interventions. These then get
generalized and theorized, and made into something
abstract. LA's notion of science and
ideology is just one of those examples.
2. In this chapter, it is going to be the
notion of science that is falsely abstracted and
made neutral, this time by ignoring its
institutional context, the hierarchies
organizations and divisions of labour that
characterize real actual science. This is
also the understanding of scientists themselves,
their 'spontaneous philosophy'.
These are powerful criticisms. I'm not sure
if R is suggesting they even apply to Marx
himself? It can look like that, as when the
famous phrase about being determining social
consciousness is located in a particular political
struggle with other philosophers, Hegel of course,
but also those earlier ones who believed in a
material sensory base for thought and
action. There are problems with R's position
too, which runs the risk of denying any autonomy
to theory or science at all. I'm also not
sure that he has not made the same sort of mistake
with his own insistence that you can somehow
induce from a number of historical examples, the
axiom of equal intelligence. There is no
doubt that some workers in revolutionary periods
in France, including a free thinking schoolmaster,
did manage to penetrate capitalist ideology, and
work out some of the ways in which they were
actually being exploited. My favourite example is
the one in Proletarian Nights, where
some workers are discussing why employers are so
cross when they absent themselves from work, as
they often did on 'holy Monday' after the excesses
of the weekend. Why should employers worry,
because they were saving the day's wages?
The answer eventually appeared—because employers
actually gain a surplus from a day's work, and it
is that surplus that they are losing when workers
absent themselves. Pretty perceptive!
However, the issue is whether this is a general
characteristic of workers, or whether it is just
limited to a specific political episode, the
turmoil in France around the revolutions of 1830
and 1848.]
Philosophy had to be partisan, and philosophy
itself had to be secured, oddly enough by
defending science, including the self
misunderstandings that scientists had about 'the
reality of their object' (57). LA saw an
urgent task to understand the production of
scientific knowledge, quite in contrast to the
necessary delay in understanding contemporary
politics. Although this looks irrelevant to
politics, it is still political, at least in its
effects. 'Class struggle in theory' looked
as if LA was taking a leftist turn, but its real
role was to use 'proper' philosophy to police
concepts.
[for whom?
LA, PCF hacks? Below, R says there was a leftist
reading too,closer to his own militant stance]
LA was trying to understand the process of
deStalinization in terms of an earlier moment, the
reaction to Zhdanov and proletarian science.
He has nothing to say about current political
issues such as the cultural revolution.
There is also nothing said about earlier episodes,
especially the unfortunate turn to proletarian
science in the Soviet Union, or the perversion of
biology by Lysenko. Ignoring these
embarrassments means science has no role in the
class struggle, only philosophy does, so the main
target for LA is 'spiritualist religious
ideology'(59). Partisan philosophy simply
defends science against religion. This is
seen particularly well in Lenin and Philosophy,
where Lenin's contribution is seen as helping the
sciences rather than investigating a problem, to
help him refute the alternative conceptions of
Bogdanov. Lenin's actual contribution would
probably look to have ignored relativity, which
was seen as bourgeois at one time. This is
typical of LA, to try to arrive at an abstract
division between idealism and materialism by
simplifying people's positions, and in particular
ignoring the complexity of the political
circumstances.
As it happens, socialist theories had also long
used idealist philosophy, sometimes to criticize
the notion of Marxism as a science [examples page
61]. The crucial issue has always been to look at
the political effects of discussions about science
and their apparent crises. What is usually
at stake is the relation between Marxist
intellectuals and the autonomy of the working
class. Lenin had already abstracted from the
issue, and LA does the same, even more
radically. Scientists are to be assisted,
since they are evidently incapable of thinking
their own productive activities, and philosophy is
required to help them become more aware.
There is a new dispositif with LA, to
moderate any philosophical independence from the
Party, but again this simply focuses on science as
offering 'the universality of certain modes of
verification', while ignoring that it also
embodies 'a certain division of labour'
(62). This helps LA to say that scientists
are actually victims of class exploitation, not
just that they can't think of their own
practice. Class exploitation intrudes
through 'idealist world views and philosophies
that exploit the results of scientific activity'
(63). [Lots of references to LA's course on
the philosophy of science]. Philosophy now
actually brings political aid to a fundamentally
good practice. Both the spontaneous
philosophy of scientists and the spontaneity of
the working class as they develop their political
consciousness are used to rebuke ignorant petty
bourgeois students. R wants to argue that class
struggle is already central to science, in its
social functions, sources of funding, applications
of research.
Even as this work was unfolding, there were
serious questions about science being asked, in
China and in the West, especially its 'relation to
power, capitalism and war' (64). If
scientists talked about the need for philosophy,
they were addressing this emerging issue, not
trying to distinguish idealism and
materialism. However, to investigate the
issue would not really require philosophy, but the
self critique of the environment in which
scientists live: but that would raise questions
about the environment in which philosophers live
[R does not seem very keen to do this either, if
it opens the gates to Bourdieu]. Instead, we
have to show that the exploitation of science is a
philosophical issue requiring philosophical
weapons.
Apparently, materialism is always open to the
threat of domination by idealism. It was
sometimes hard to persuade scientists themselves,
but this only shows the 'dominance exerted by the
extra-scientific' (65). The 'proof' here is
that idealism dominates contemporary scientists'
language, whereas it did not do so before.
Detailed arguments in L A.s philosophy course for
scientists ensue, 65-66. What LA does is to
take some existing work on the sorts of problems
that scientists face, [which actually look a bit
like the difference between normal and
revolutionary science in Kuhn], but to which he
wants to add occasional epistemological
problems. However the latter only arise as a
threat to science from philosophy, an attempt to
exploit crises through constructing pseudo
problems. Scientists can not introduce
dubious ideological epistemological terms
themselves, so they must be introduced by a
lurking idealism. R says there is a parallel
in the way in which Soviet paradise required a
police force to reject evil trotskyite
infiltrators. Philosophy cannot have the great
role of constructing proletarian science anymore,
so it can only pose as a 'a petty philanthropist
that is always but one step away from degenerating
into the police' (67).
R makes sure that he is not accusing LA himself of
having controlling intentions, but instead focuses
on 'one way of practicing philosophy. The
structure of its problematic', which he says
inevitably produces LA's further work, such as
that of the Reply. The problematic,
through LA, produces a police force. If it
attracted leftists, that was only because they
enjoyed correcting particular words and validating
particular utterances as revolutionary or
reactionary—they were academics. Of course
words are weapons in class struggle, but
philosophy should do more than arbitrate between
good and bad ones, such as 'the masses' vs. 'man'.
These tendencies were already detectable in LA
before May'68, and were used to interpret the
events. Petty bourgeois students could not
lead or give lessons to the working class.
At the same time, the spontaneous interests of the
working class were economist. Students might
have taken the lead from syndicalist working class
leaders in organizing occupations. Students
did not lead the events, even if their
disturbances were merely chronologically in
advance of workers striking. The chronology
misleads and confuses real historical
orders. LA still gets into difficulty,
though: it is hardly novel to say that the May
events could only be successful with working class
support, and dangerously Hegelian to argue that
the students somehow got their ideas but they were
poorly developed before the strike clarified
them. LA has to play with language here,
seeing students as detonators, not
vanguards. Students were misled for the same
reason that scientists are—they were forced to
believe what were fundamentally bourgeois views
about their significance.
However, revolting students did not seem to be
willing to ask for philosophical advice,
especially from the pcf who seem to be quietist
about universities and concerned to reestablish
order. That was the reason some professors
actually turned to the pcf, and gained some
comfort from LA's work. Some used LA to
conduct a theoretical offensive against left
wingers like Foucault [R argues that students also
joined in, and that Bourdieu and Passeron were
also useful]. Tel Quel was also developing
a congenial academic Marxism. However, LA
himself did not want to be seen to be openly
supporting pcf order. In his more public
work at least, he pointed to problems still to be
solved, and undesirable effects of some solutions
to defending science. Whereas the student problems essay
openly supported the pcf line while still
containing some 'subversive propositions' (71), L
A. inverted this strategy after 68, flirting with
maoism, openly criticizing the Party and its
policy [R says the isas essay should be seen in
this light --below]. The new notion of class
struggle in theory would help attract a leftist
fringe.
The events of May had already divided
intellectuals—some wanted to preserve the
authority of their knowledge and pursue their
peaceful career, some 'as [both] mandarins and
communists' (72). This group was further
divided. Some realized that attacking
bourgeois ideology will end attacking the relevant
set of institutions, including the split between
mental and manual labour, abandoning the purely
intellectual struggle against reactionary
books. This group were the 'gauche
proletarienne' [GP] and the 'secours rouge'
[SR]. However there was a right wing
response as well, which focused on class struggle
as universal, which then meant there was no need
to go into factories or anything, and opened up a
nice academic battlefield to fight revisionism or
'preserve the materiality of writing' (73). [I
think R's own notions of politics as universal
dissent runs this risk too]. ' Class struggle in
theory' appealed to this group especially,
although it seemed more like militant activity to
the left wing. The same splits had gone on even
inside the Party and other Marxist
organisations, where every challenge to hierarchy
would immediately be interpreted as struggles
between bourgeois and proletarian ideologies and
so on. Maoist slogans helped here.
This was 'the authoritarian ideology of
leftism' emerging after May '68.
LA came to talk about ideological state
apparatuses (isas) as a corrective to the
view that ideological domination was just a matter
of the social imaginary. Now, students were
seen as controlled directly by academic
institutions, forms of selection and control and
use of knowledge. R himself first launched
this idea as a critique of LA [see
Appendix]. At first, this was a fundamental
criticism of the abstractions of LA, the science
ideology split, class struggle in theory and the
others, and it also seemed like unwelcome politics
to the pcf. LA incorporated it by ignoring
the political conditions which had produced the
concept, and pretended to have discovered it
simply from his reading of the classics of Marxist
theory 'particularly Gramsci' (74). It did
not emerge from May '68 but from heroic
research. May '68 is simply denied, not even
explained by comparing historical to real
orders. No one else apparently was aware of
such roles for the school. Noisy practice
had to be tidied up. Normal social life did
not throw up any untidiness or contradictions. LA
does admit that some teachers have been able to
become aware and struggle against the system, and
they're heroes, but no students have worked it
out. Interpellation works every time, except
for the occasional deviant who then requires a
repressive state apparatus.
In this way, isas fit in to the old problematic,
with misrecognition as the core. There are
apparatuses, but the ideological structures are
eternal. Interpellation is eternal as
well. R objects to the application to
religion and the church, by saying that the actual
churches can play a political role, and also
mentions the Lip workers again. Ideology
remains as a form of illusion, supported by 'an
enslaving mechanism' (76), but this is a general
analysis which ignores specific concrete
struggles. There is no analysis of those who
are dominated, no analysis of class
struggle. We see the workings of 'an
enormous despotic machine that subjects every
individual to its functioning', even incorporating
organizations like unions and parties have tried
to struggle against it. Even though LA
eventually repents, politics is still not explored
[presumably in the sense of the necessary and
universal struggle as in conflict theory?].
R calls this 'Ultra-left-Platonism'(77), and the
ultra left position contrasts strangely with those
who wanted to see 'class struggle in theory' as a
matter of finding the class location of words: it
is the latter that dominates the Reply,
and isas are not mentioned at all.
Again, there must have been an ironic reaction
from the pcf when they saw LA saying that parties
and unions were isas, but he was rather discreet
about it. Perhaps LA was not rebuked because
he continued to write for the communist press—'the
words didn't have to be orthodox, they just had to
be printed in the right publication'.
[This chapter has an appendix, addressing the
notion of the epistemological break, as a
demonstration of the difference between ideology
and science, and as a way of policing the works of
Marx.] This shows the usefulness of the
notion of class struggle in theory, especially in
the argument that Marx had adopted proletarian
positions in politics and that this helped him
with his efforts in theory and philosophy.
However, by the time we get to the Reply,
the stages in the break are seen as 'incontestable
facts', a polemic that is also found among party
apparatchiks. Again, there is no attempt to
look at the concrete cases represented by terms
such as petty bourgeois communism, or even
proletarian communism, and these terms were by no
means solidified in 1844 or 45. As a result,
LA simply applies hindsight, or
tautology—'proletarian' is simply defined as
Marxist theory defined it, so it is nonsense to
say that movements had an independent effect on
Marxist theory.
Similarly, there were many strands rather than one
simple epistemological break. LA simplifies
because he has to see the changes in Marx's
thought as a result of the philosophical
revolution, which is also incomplete, explaining
the survival of earlier categories.
Continuing political struggle with the dreaded
bourgeoisie also prompts a return to these
concepts, and we even have stern warnings like
those in the debate on science, that idealism can
force its way in, even to Marxism. This is
an example of the reality of class struggle in
theory. However, there are contradictions
again—Marx sometimes speak solely on behalf of the
proletariat, but apparently also on behalf of the
bourgeoisie on other occasions with other
words. There are no actual historical
connections between bourgeois ideological
offensives and the emergence of terms like
alienation in the later work. Marx himself denied
that he did much leading of the workers' movement,
and he was not exactly engaged permanently in
class struggle.
What should be looking at is something much more
concrete, reflected in the changes of
terminology. Marx uses empiricist language
against philosophical concepts, then borrows the
old philosophical categories to think about the
revolution of 1848, he uses Hegelian
categories when he starts on political economy,
and Hegelian logic to structure Capital.
The specific analyses, like the civil war in
France, still seem to talk about the struggle to
reclaim a part in social life. We also find
working class aspiration in the discussion of
fetishism, with an argument that the possibility
of free producers in free association has to be
mystified by merchandising and the functioning of
the markets: this was the dream of workers on
strike in Paris at the time [and described more
fully in Proletarian Nights].
As a result, there is no Marxist science to be
defended from ideological corruption, but 'many
logics', 'different discursive strategies',
borrowed discourses taken from current ways in
which classes think of themselves or argue,
including those of philosophers, factory
inspectors, workers and classical
economists. There is no single class
struggle in theory, rather it is the class
struggle and the characteristic discourses it
operates with that have affected the discourse of
theorists. There is always contamination
with non scientific elements, and always an
interweaving, say between bourgeois and
proletarian accounts.
Chapter four. A Lesson in History
[LA operates with a very abstract history which
ignores all the complexity and detail of actual
history, especially of working class protest and
rebellion, and, of the Soviet union and the
transitions between Lenin and Stalin. It is
ultimately supportive of Party orthodoxies and
discreet silences].
As an example of the new applied kind of
philosophy, LA turns to examine every day
politics, especially in the Soviet union, but also
Czechoslovakia. Again, this is really only a
pretext to revive the argument about humanism,
which is eternal. It is only objects of
analysis that the new. Humanism is central to L
A's project. It is an ideological myth, even
though rebellious workers, Marx and Mao still seem
to be talking about man and a humane
society. So were the Lip workers, even as LA
was 'entering France's theoretical market'
(83). LA is keen to argue that this is not
an attack on real men, preserving the speculative
nature of philosophy: it is just a philosophical
battle over 'words waged and the class
struggle'. Philosophy can always claim that
it is only talking about concepts rather than
actual men, which avoids ambiguity, 'but at the
price of rendering it incapable of saying other
than the generalities accepted by everyone'
(84). No one except John Lewis even argued
the history does have a subject, 'and who gives a
second thought to John Lewis?'. Everyone
agrees that of course the subject is a dubious
category—the only quarrel is the shape in which
this critique takes. 'The only ones who dare
speak of man without proviso or precautions are,
in fact, the workers'. LA seems to accept
that philosophy is really only about concepts and
correct words, which hardly leads to suitable
politics, except the politics of the
academy. The wrong words, including the ones
that workers use, have to be explained by
particular circumstances. In this way, words
like 'man' turn out to be on the side of the
employers.
It seems easy to trace the ideological nature of
human freedom, from the notion of market freedom,
and the category of the legal subject. These
mystify 'the reality of the class
struggle'(85). Marxist philosophy aims to
stop workers identifying themselves with these
illusory men. This presupposes as usual that
only the bourgeoisie think, that popular thought
is just an expression of the relations of
domination. However, there has been a notion
of freedom among the workers that is not the
bourgeois one, there has been an antagonism, not a
legal freedom, but a collective one, the freedom
to collectively negotiate wages. This has
long been in conflict with bourgeois freedom and
has led to
industrial struggle.
Worker actions have imposed a different notion of
equality, not just a legal one, but an equality
between employers and workers specifically,
including laws which prevent unionism and exempt
employers from forming associations of their
own. In such troubles, the bourgeoisie does
not rely on claims that all men are equal, but
openly acknowledges of class struggle, which it
sees as the struggle between barbarism and
civilisation: seditious workers are to be denied
human rights, even in the courts. Rebellious
workers insisted that there were no class
distinctions, that all were men, that the old days
of slavery or chatteldom were passed.
Workers denied that they were wage slaves, and
demanded the same rights as their employers: they
were producers. They were perfectly capable
of honesty and good sentiments. Employers
did not have property rights over them. This
is a much more concrete and political notion of
equality, not an abstract one, and some workers
created their own workshops to show that they did
not actually need masters. The drive to be
an autonomous producer is still found in the
present, as in Lip and the demand that the economy
'serves man' (90).
This exposes a major theme in bourgeois ideology,
that workers cannot change events and must resign
themselves to existing social relations, that
inequality is natural. Even if we did away
with private ownership, 'natural vices' would
reestablish inequality, such as that between the
idle and the energetic. This becomes an
argument that work is a gift of capitalism,
requiring proper markets and investments and so
on. The USSR was held up as the only
undesirable and authoritarian alternative.
However, the Lip workers could see through that
with their notion that there could be another
economy. When workers insist on the right to
work, they are not embracing the notion of the
legal subject, but rather showing
that behind apparent economic reality lie
politics, that apparent economic necessities are
simply strategies to attack labour.
Specifically, work is not a gift, but expresses a
struggle for autonomy, and we see behind this
debate two notions of power, one exercised by the
state and employers, and the other exercised by
labour through its institutions.
Struggle often focuses on the organiztion of the
factory, including resistance to 'factory
despotism' appearing as the only
alternative. Such despotism attacks labour
community and autonomy as a major goal, and it has
always been resisted by the labour process as
defined by the labour community. Discourses
and words are relatively minor players.
Words can have a clear class allegiance, but there
are other forms of distinction and a great deal of
ambiguity and overlap: they can even change
sides. Marx recognizes this himself in his
comments on the Commune, and an echo of the
politics of the workerist struggles inform the
analysis of fetishism in Capital [I have
tried to find this precise section without success
so far, but] R argues that the notions of men as
autonomous producers have a role to play in the
theoretical discourse, somehow prompting the need
for a science. In LA, science never overlaps
with ideology, and working class discourses are
all categorised as humanism. LA acknowledges
that sometimes slogans like 'socialism with a
human face' in Czechoslovakia should not be
condemned, but they are still 'words, not
concepts' (95).
For LA, words merely represent ideological
images. The isas essay seems to have been
forgotten, and the only issues to distinguish
between appearance and essence. Behind the
appearance of free citizenship is private interest
and trade relations, and so on. However,
Marx's citation of Bentham as pointing to the
illusions of freedom, might also be an allusion to
Bentham's work on the power of surveillance in
despotism, the discipline found in workshops,
schools and prisons. For LA, it is a
political decision to see the real separation
between workers and their powers of production in
metaphysical terms—ideology operates through
insufficient vision, poor representations.
Only words which are produced from outside the
social relations, in science, can offer a proper
vision. However, this makes philosophy into
an operation of censure and correction.
LA's turning back to practice is supposed to
help. Thus the Czech case was expressed in
humanist terms, because they were limited in the
words they could use. Philosophers of course
are not permitted this excuse—but R says that
words are already stripped of meaning in
philosophy journals! (96). They only
take on a political function if they contradict
what the pcf line happens to be there. This
goes along with a convenient division of labour
where theory demands particular rules for
discussion, and untidy political issues can be
ruled out. The autonomy of theory has to be
defended, so that messy practices need not
intrude, like those of the Czechs.
The same evasions characterize the discussion of
Stalinism. This is not as novel as it looks,
and others [Castoriadis is the example] had
already made the main arguments about how the
productive forces had not been properly
understood, and the analysis of the relations of
production and lagged behind. The changes in
China had also been decisive, and leftism in the
west. The Chinese party had pursued their
own policy of development, based on both
agriculture and heavy industry, which preserved
the notion of collectivization not mechanization,
and this helped resist the development of a
hierarchical division of labour. Material
incentives were not all powerful. There is
also an encouragement to develop mass political
solutions instead of centralised ones.
What was novel in LA was to quietly incorporate
some leftist theses, new to the pcf. This
was managed by theorising them, canceling their
political effects, and claiming to have made
theoretical discoveries. In particular,
Stalinism had to be seen in the familiar terms of
economism/humanism, with the latter forcing its
way on to the agenda. Stalin's economistic
politics is examined under the concept of
deviation, and, since a deviation is a form of
recurrence of earlier ideas, Stalinist deviation
can be seen as the revenge of the Second
international, itself understood in terms of the
struggles between economism and humanism. LA
claims this is Leninist, although this is of
course are reading of what Lenin said: actually,
his was an analysis of political fractions and the
social forces that nourished them, not a clash of
principles.
LA is very incurious about what the more immediate
origins of the deviation might be. This is
because they might be traced back to Lenin after
all. Lenin also advocated factory
discipline, specialists, material incentives and
the rest, although possibly only as local and
limited tactics. Nevertheless, he did see
the need to transform the masses through large
scale industrialization and the elimination of
older forms of production which generated
capitalist ideologies. These capitalist
forms were unavoidable, but they did discipline
the workers. Their voice was heard through
the state apparatus. Stalin's policy worked
against this background. Lenin was a link in
the chain between the second international and
Stalin. Lenin thought that it was necessary
for capitalist productive forces to be developed,
even though socialism could be inaugurated
immediately. Capitalist discipline was
required for socialist organization. Lenin
also modelled the party on German social
democratic ideas. Economic factors were more
important than the influence of bourgeois
ideologies, and Soviet workers would be
disempowered not by inadequate thought, but by
factory despotism. It was no good giving
workers power through state apparatuses, if they
lacked it at the level of labour processes.
Of course the actual shift to Stalinism depended
on local political conditions as well as
tendencies—the class struggle in the countryside,
the emerging power of experts, the repressive
practices of police apparatuses. But
Bolshevism itself bears a responsibility for what
happened, and how it conceived the dictatorship of
the proletariat and how class might continue to
operate. Bourgeois ideology has an effect
here, but not in terms of promoting humanism, more
in terms of seeing factory discipline and various
other apparatuses as essential. Given these
developments, what can communism and LA offer us
in the future? Leaders of the party seem
content to do abstract philosophy and politics,
and do not analyse real power relations.
They have not criticised the notion of democratic
centralism and what the party will do if it comes
to power. A serious analysis of Lenin as
well as Stalin is required, and so is a
recognition that Marxism does not guarantee a
particular forms of politics.
It is not surprising that LA wants to divert
attention to the second international, to make his
attack on humanism and bourgeois penetrations of
Marxism take on a real appearance. Again the
politics are rendered as abstract discussions of
philosophical categories, 'reducing the actual to
the eternal, the other to the same' (105), seeing
underlying continuities in history even though
history is discontinuous. In particular,
there is a continuous and homogenous class
struggle, and this requires no analysis of current
situations. Oddly enough, that restores the
notion of a subject of history—the labour
movement, and its subsidiaries like the Paris
communards, the working class and so on.
This is despite a role for philosophy as
distinguishing idealist and materialist elements,
or proletarian and bourgeois ones. Together,
there are political advantages in avoiding
discussion of particular disasters like Stalinism,
or analyzing current power and class relations in
the USSR. The source of any problems is
excessive economism. China is supported to
the extent that it helps against economism, and
every other thinker is allocated to camps
according to whether they help or not.
This develops a new orthodoxy, patrolling
theoretical forms only, avoiding the difficult
issues like whether labour camps existed in the
USSR or not. Humanist protests are diverting
us from some important theoretical labour.
All forms of protest in places like the USSR can
be seen alike as humanist. We can forgive
these protests, and see them as limited by the
choice of words they can use, but we need to keep
theory safe.
Where would any critical analyses be based,
however? Not in the pcf, but outside the
party lies only 'free cultural chit chat'
(108). LA can only have a highly limited
discussion about Stalinism, without asking awkward
questions about power or class relations in the
USSR. He is prepared to pretend that is not
aware of any legal violations in the USSR.
Everything has to be traced back to humanism, so
that the 'real relations of domination and…
the voices of revolt' can be ignored.
To transform real issues into philosophical ones
like this is idealism, and it confines discussion
to academics. Real militants would ask
questions not about economism, but the
organization of factories and hierarchy.
French unionists seem to have accepted hierarchies
[one even claims that salary hierarchy is 'class
struggle because it reduces employers'
profits'(109)]. It is groups seeking power
who support economism, including elites in the
working class.
LA might well claim that he is simply
soft-pedalling these issues in order to get the
discussion started in the pcf, and that he is
addressing 'clever readers' who can see this
hidden intention [echoes of Bourdieu on elite
discourse!] . However, this 'discourse
serves as a conduit for the power of specialists',
and is addressed to 'Marxist mandarins', and so is
complicit itself in a form of class
struggle. It amounts to the same thing as
conventional power plays like 'the manager's
humanism', which ultimately defend 'the privilege
of competent people'.
Philosophy does no more than those Stalinist
prosecutors who saw signs or indexes of class
enemies in 'objective contradictions' or
particular words (110). L A's account of
Stalin is apologetic, arguing that normal Marxism
is still valid. This is a mode of reasoning
of state Marxism. This is what L A's class
struggle in theory has led to, 'the impotence to
change the world, the power to reproduce the power
of specialists'. The failure to relate to
real events is the source of 'philosophical
dignity'.
Chapter five A Discourse in its place
[Brilliant stuff about professional intellectuals
here, aimed at LA but very widely applicable. Up
the soixante-huitards!]
LA wanted to see what was singular about Marxism,
what made it more than a justification of the
party, or mere 'fodder for cultural chit chat'
(111). All the work is left with these days,
though, is 'its own caricature', able to prattle
about all sorts of things ' with the approximative
discourse of academic (that is, obscurantist)
knowledge', all about self justification, trying
to save the revolution, denouncing bourgeois
infiltrators and 'teaching its readers what they
should and should not say if they want to be good
Marxists' (112). [reminiscent of the CCCS]
It is not exactly what the Party teaches,
though. LA deals with the differences by
being ironic after taking suitable
precautions. He is attained radical to show
that 'a total freedom remains intact'. His
subversive works 'never entail any disruptive
practices'. He can engage in gentle mockery,
but he takes no action in real issues, such as
when non communist teachers are denounced as
troublemakers. He can talk about class
struggle, 'provided he does not bother himself
with any of the class struggles happening
today'. This is the familiar kind of
bourgeois freedoms for intellectuals: they can say
anything they like as long as they are perpetuate
the structure of the university. The Party
knows that theorists can no longer be expected to
find ways to support politics, and have decided
just to let them 'say whatever they want, in the
places where their
discourse is sure to merge into the hum of
cultural chit chat' (113). There is no
longer any choice to be made between committing to
the Party or to elite academic life.
Academics offer an authorized heterodoxy which
helps the party defend its own
toleration—'Althusser's book shows that members of
the party can say whatever they want'. This is
inevitable with any discourse abstracted from its
context. It is what happens when you try to
find 'the rationality of politics outside
politics, the revolutionary dialectics outside
the… practices' of revolt'. The
'purpose of academic discourse is [only] the
formation of students' and there are real power
relations in the places that discourses are
produced. Radical intellectuals must take
them into account and attempt to transform these
power relations, and as they are to become only
intellectuals. LA has not done this, however
[nor have most radicals, none of the gramscians,
not Biesta]. He answered all questions about
his practice by neutralising his discourse.
This
location in the university and the party was
simply a tactical matter. He posed as
speaking from within theory, not from within the
university, from the labour movement, not from the
party. When he was forced to choose a
political practice, he chose 'a certain labour
movement', one that supported Brezhnev. But
because LA claims to speak from the perspective of
theory, this becomes speaking for everybody, and
apparently drawing upon the experience of every
labour movement.There is no intention even to
defend reformism as a tactic, to turn out the
vote, so as to pursue revolution in strategy.
Abstract theory like this is doomed to become
atemporal even as it discusses history, academic
while it tries to be political. If there is
an insistence that the masses make history, this
only strengthens 'the power of the ones who say
so, the ones who decree from their armchairs that
these words are bourgeois, those proletarian'
(115). Even maoism is inverted, and serves
only to introduce into philosophy the notion of
revolt, a way of reconciling ideas with the
militant loyalties. LA uses it to claim a
universality for his position on science.
Marxism has become useful as the defence of the
division of labour in ideas, with the class
struggle in theory as supreme It is the old
function of interpreting the world rather than
changing it. With the development in the
USSR of state intellectuals, intellectuals are
able to 'impose real chains in the name of the
proletariat and of class struggle' (116), in the
guise of 'the intelligentsia', a further
reinforcement of a rational hierarchy.
Intelligentsia are able to transform workers into
active members of the party, but this also gives
them 'the power to recognise the
provocateur'.
L A.s Marxist philosophy claims to represent the
proletariat, speaking in their name to negate
petty bourgeois ideologists, and identify the real
enemy. The real threats to Marxism are seen
as humanism and ideologies of human rights.
This helps police all those other forms of
subversion, instead of supporting them
In this way, what looks like an appeal to Marxism
or even maoism, or a critique of the subject is
really a 'the call to order'. It serves the
cause of revisionism. It is 'directly
correlated to the system of practices—discursive
and otherwise—of our communist apparatuses'
(117). These now aspire to accommodate
capitalism, but Party theorists cannot use the old
language of revisionism, nor can they say that the
time for revolution has passed and that capitalism
has not collapsed. Such views would hit
party morale and fail to attract rebellious
youth. The language of class struggle is
still required, but it is a domesticated one.
That language is used to fight off leftist
provocations in the name of order.
Denouncing occupations and provocations as petty
bourgeois while awaiting the scientific form of
transition is no longer popular, however. It
is possible to depict revisionism as somehow
theoretical, even Maoist, in a 'philosophy of
recuperation' (118). Leftism was already in
historical decline in France—both maoism and
Trotsky ism had been marginalised, 'and the old
combatants of May 22 were singing about the libido
and about desiring machines' (118). However,
the same ideas are being expressed in new forms,
in new 'communities of struggle', among workers,
peasants immigrant workers, young people, women,
and national minorities. There is
proliferation rather than unity under any one
particular banner. Lip showed the subversive
potential of apparently docile workers, and offers
a new kind of subversion, outside of 'leftism's
totalizing discourse'. LA and others have
responded by saying that only the old apparatuses'
can possibly can now offer any kind of unity, and
that everything still needs to be led by the
Party.
These events have restored 'the discourse of
armchair Marxists', and helped official Marxism
recover from May '68. The Events had shown
that the PCF was the party of
order. Some professors had always been able
to argue that revolutionaries strategy depended
first on adequate theory, but this was not widely
accepted by the militants themselves. They
realized that the struggle itself could
systematize, and political organizations
universalize. The totalizing discourse of
leftism, as in the GP was no more successful,
except as some universal enemy for Marxist
intellectuals. No unifying discourse is
available now to link struggles of youth and those
of other groups, unless we deal in 'the most
blatant generalities' (119). The struggles
are multiple, and reflect 'a multiplication of the
discourses of struggle', as Foucault predicted
with the prisoners' movement.
Lip in particular showed a coherent discourse
emerging which has had more impact. There
was no attempt to take specific complaints or
slogans and make them into 'the discourse of the
spokesperson for the universal proletarian'
(120). The Lip workers' discourse genuinely
joined May '68 with syndicalism, and the
experience of workers' struggle with even a
Christian ideology. Indeed, many subversive
practices use idealist theories. They can be
no grand syntheses. Emergent discourses do
not 'meet the demand for an overall reflection
about today's struggles', but they do show that
there is not just a void which makes such
reflection impossible—'the void of the universal,
the void of the book'.
The old parties have tried to reassert themselves,
and so have 'armchair Marxists' who offer some
'ecumenical dogmatism' while 'saying the rosary of
the certainties that are everyone's common
property', about the role of the masses and the
party and all that. Those certainties remove
doubts that there are things like 'the'
proletariat, or one single authoritative Marxism
Leninism, that the only splits are between
bourgeois and proletarian, and that party
intellectuals can always tell which is
which. That is, they provides the dogmatism
with philosophical principles, including the
critique of the subject and the process without a
subject—this helps to claim a universal
significance without having to specify who it is
who is speaking: it can be assumed to be the
universal proletarian. This also helps
ignore the circumstances or contexts from which
this philosophy emerges.
This philosophy looked finished in May '68, but
the Events 'did not destroy the theoretical and
political machine of representation' (121), where
someone claims the right to promote a universal
discourse in the name of the masses. This
machine is still in operation, and intellectuals
are still unable to see anything positive in May
'68, anything that might help them rethink their
position. The threat produced by an uprising
of a whole new group of intellectuals against the
power of the bourgeoisie, including their cultural
power, was contained, not only by the familiar
petty bourgeois but also the avant-garde
intellectuals. There was an awareness,
especially in the GP, that the division of labour
between intellectual and manual was at the heart
of the problem, but this is still an abstract
understanding, and led to tokenism such as the
transformation by some students into manual
labourers, and it led to a reversal, whereby
intellectuals were still allowed to speak with
even more authority 'in the name of the
proletarian'(122). The policy led to a split
inside petty bourgeois intellectuals, where one
faction had to repress the other in this
name. The intact discourse of representation
undermined the whole revolt of the
intellectuals. 'this mechanism is not the
product of ignorance or of the arrogance of petty
bourgeois "spontaneity", but of Marxism learned in
the classrooms of universities and "working class
organizations"' (122). It finds its best
expression in the discourse of LA. No
revolts since May '68 have been able to attack it,
especially its pretensions towredas hrte
universal. Leftism responded only by
developing 'the accusatory, and merely reactive,
the discourse of "desire"'.
The class struggle will persist even if we abandon
Marxism. There is no new purer Marxism to be
found either: it has 'always been inflected by
social practices… Discourses and practices
of revolt' (123) even in Marx's day. Mass
struggle is the only way to defeat the
'theoretical and political apparatus of
representation that blocks the autonomous
expression of revolt'.
R knows his own argument is not
exempt. He also invokes the masses and the
practices' of workers and peasants 'to shore up
our discourse'. What really is the point of
swapping philosophical texts, or turning to 'the
discourse of workers from long ago'? Little
has been actually established, and perhaps
something positive should be sought instead,
something that is 'more than a scholarly pastime
tailor-made to swell the existing ranks of Marxist
and para-Marxist literature'. There is no
way out of the circle, but we can at least reveal
the effects intended by dogmatism. We can
critique professors who claim to be speaking with
a universal discourse, and LA is exemplary.
This critique has first of all put it back in 'the
system of practical and discursive constraints
that allowed it to be uttered at all', and tried
to disarticulate it by forcing it to answer other
questions outside of its usual range, including
words used in the past. It is not a
refutation of LA, because 'it is useless to refute
dogmatism', but it is an attempt to stop
Althusserianism functioning so smoothly, and to
show how it supports the existing order while
pretending to be revolutionary [why? surely it was
a dead dog by then?]. This critique is
itself an example of 'the expressions through
which the struggle and questions of our present
seek to give voice to a new freedom' (124).
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