23.04.1998
Struggle for science
Phil Sharpe continues our debate on Althusser
In the Weekly Worker (April 2), Phil Watson criticised my characterisation of Althusser as a theoretical proletarian revolutionary. In reply to comrade Watson, I would argue, firstly, that a short letter can only establish a one-sided, schematic and polemical Althusser, or an Althusser without the full range of his theoretical contradictions. Althusser’s work is not without flaws and major limitations. In this regard, Althusser’s work, following that of Bachelard, uses philosophical arguments in order to reject the importance of philosophy. All philosophy, except Marxism, is regarded as a form of idealism. This is the same position as that of Marx in The German ideology, who essentially equated philosophy with the illusion of ideology.
Secondly, the problems of Althusser’s rejection of philosophy can be shown by a brief study of some important Marxist philosophers. Lenin’s Philosophical notebooks show the importance of dialectical philosophy for understanding contradiction in reality and thought, and that dialectics represents the highest level of class struggle in relation to showing the philosophical aspects of the counterrevolutionary role of the Second International.
Adorno developed his understanding of subject-object non-identity reasoning in opposition to the idealist and mechanical materialist adaptation to capitalism. Rigid identity reasoning defines reality in an oppressive manner, and is a philosophical obstacle to revolution. This is why the struggle to construct an open and fluid dialectic is the highest form of class struggle, and is directed against the counterrevolutionary content of existing philosophy.
Roy Bhaskar elaborates Adorno’s negative dialectic with an emphasis upon negativity and open rather than closed totalities, and shows that in the last instance philosophy is primary for explaining social reality and the problems involved in trying to change it. The philosophical hegemony of irrealism (empiricism, idealism and positivism) helps to understand the domination of capitalism, and why there has been a failure to establish a viable socialist society, which is expressed by the limitations of Soviet diamat philosophy.
It is idealist to deny the importance of philosophical consciousness when trying to explain social reality. For example, Fukuyama’s rightwing Hegelian thesis that the end of history has culminated in capitalism expresses the dominant and prevailing ideological view, and which has a material impact in the collapse of the Soviet Union and in relation to the political crisis of the working class on a world scale. Fukuyama’s views are not just a reactionary response to events with an origin in his political views: rather they relate in a complex way to real developments in objective reality, and connect to the prevailing moods within the intelligentsia, bourgeoisie and working class about the events of 1989-91 and the consequent needs to interpret these developments in a philosophical manner. Thus it is not sufficient to develop an economic and political critique of Fukuyama: the basis to establish a revolutionary alternative to his views must begin with a challenge to his interpretation of a Hegelian view of history.
In the context of the importance of history for defining our understanding of history in a dialectical manner, Althusser’s conception of the emergence of Marxism does not sufficiently show the importance of philosophy for developing historical materialism. He was aware of this problem in that he concedes it is possible to locate a positivist interpretation of his conception of the epistemological break, because in the emergence of Marxism from pre-Marxist ideology science supersedes and incorporates philosophy. He also argues that dialectical materialism lags behind Marx’s breakthrough with the development of the science of historical materialism, but he never satisfactorily describes what dialectical materialism should be like if it is to catch up with historical materialism, despite this being his stated intention and aim to show the importance of dialectical materialism.
Yet paradoxically Althusser is aware of using philosophy in the positivist terms of calling for an end to philosophy in its reduction to being the conscience or criticism of science, but he still continues to accept a positivist standpoint in his call for Marxist philosophy to be constituted and defined in the historical materialist standpoint of differentiating the young and old Marx, and in showing Marx’s idealist break from Hegel.
So how do we define Althusser as a theoretical proletarian revolutionary? This definition can be developed in relation to his views about historical materialism. Firstly, Marx’s works, the Theses on Feuerbach and German ideology (Althusser was still critical of the latter’s emphasis on science at the expense of philosophy), represented a break with Hegelian idealism and Feuerbach’s mechanical materialism and idealism, or a break with these ideological limitations in the early writings of Marx. To deny this rupture is to imply either that Hegel’s and Feuerbach’s ideas are of no real significance and do not constitute an ideological problem for Marx; or alternatively to effectively suggest that there was an inherent teleological (inevitable, fatalistic) break by Marx with Hegel’s view of history as the teleological realisation of the absolute spirit (labour in its materialist form, as found in the Paris manuscripts) and a similar smooth break with Feuerbach’s realisation of human species being.
Phil Watson seems to be arguing that Althusser’s epistemological break is static and does not establish the process of Marx’s theoretical development, but Althusser’s approach is dynamic rather than rigid in that he locates the contradiction and struggle with Hegel and Feuerbach in the development of a new science of historical materialism. Althusser shows that Marx’s emphasis upon social relations rather than timeless transhistorical categories is developed with The German ideology. In order to criticise Althusser’s epistemological break, Watson is silent about Marx’s theoretical relationship to Hegel and Feuerbach, because to comment on this relationship would invoke the necessity to re-establish the criteria and precise moment (epistemological break) for us to objectively evaluate the break of Marx from the idealist conceptions of history and Feuerbach.
Secondly, in his study of contradiction and overdetermination, Althusser brings out the profound theoretical importance of Lenin, the proletarian revolutionary. Lenin understood that social reality, which created the conditions for proletarian revolution in Russia, could not be reduced to one basic principle, or contradiction, in contrast to Hegel’s reduction of history to the simple contradiction of the realisation of the spirit. To Lenin there was an overdetermination of contradictions that produced revolution.
Lenin’s studies on the concrete situation, and in his attempts to develop revolutionary perspectives as a guide to action for the party and the working class, was also a challenge to the domination of Hegelian idealism within the Second International in connection to historical materialism. The Second International based itself on the main contradiction between the bourgeoisie and proletariat in order to define history upon endist and inevitable premises.
In contrast, Lenin’s emphasis on the balance of class forces and the multiplicity of contradictions shows an open-ended and more contradictory view of history, and which can be theoretically elaborated on the basis of overdetermination and structure in dominance. What remains in a raw and untheorised state in Lenin’s writings of 1917, the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, etc, can be developed into a more complex approach in relation to understanding the structures and relations of social reality.
Thirdly, Althusser maintains that theoretical practice is necessary for principled political practice to occur. Theoretical practice involves the transformation of limited ideological (idealist) knowledge into scientific knowledge that is needed to help explain social reality, and thereby facilitate the possibility to change reality in a revolutionary manner. Dialectical materialism is the theory of theoretical practice, and helps to differentiate between materialism and idealism in the process of producing knowledge about reality.
The dynamic aspect of the means of production in the development of knowledge is theoretical labour. This means ‘generalities 1’ (raw material of knowledge) is not primarily explained by the immediacy of sensations and facts, but is instead the potential for transformation into concepts through the application of ‘generalities 2’ (means of production - the scientific theory) and this leads to the production of new knowledge, of ‘generalities 3’. We only get to know concrete reality through the concrete of thought, or theoretical interpretation which is immediately tested in practice.
Consequently, we may conclude from the theory of theoretical practice that if we neglect the development of ‘generalities 2’, the means of production - for example the theory of imperialism - we end up with opportunist political practice, as with the Second International. In contrast, Lenin’s Philosophical notebooks show that if we are concerned to understand reality profoundly, it is necessary to enrich the concept of dialectical contradiction for this purpose. Hegel’s Science of logic is his ‘generalities 2’, or his methodological tool to facilitate analysis of the new counterrevolutionary role of the Second International and to show the necessity to construct a new Third International. The possibility for new revolutionary practice is the outcome of a dialectical philosophical revolution, and there is also a new distinct contribution to historical materialism with the theory of imperialism. So at the level of theoretical practice, the ‘generalities 1’, the facts of imperialist war are connected to ‘generalities 2’ (Hegel’s Science of logic), and the result of ‘generalities 3’, which shows the intensification of class antagonisms and the need for a qualitative leap in class consciousness and practice if proletarian revolution is to be possible.
It is now necessary to tackle Phil Watson’s criticisms of Althusser in terms of his alleged rigid conception of the ideology-science relationship, the role of Stalinism, and an apparent static theory of knowledge. Firstly, to Althusser, ideology is both a lived relation, or essential to the structures of society (we accept the ideology of the capital-labour relation in order to justify working to obtain a means of subsistence), and is also imaginary. The bourgeoisie can only justify their domination through developing a mythical ideology of freedom, which goes alongside the reality of operation of the laws of political economy. In class society, ideology is vital to enable us to be “equipped to respond to the demands [of] their condition of existence” (L Althusser For Marx London 1990, p235).
Thus, like it or not, we all are dominated by bourgeois ideology under capitalist society, and there is no easy way to overcome this problem. Much of the existing ideology has an idealist and empiricist character, and so the struggle for science is the struggle of materialism and dialectics against idealism and empiricism. Contrary to Watson’s claims that Althusser has an abstracted, or separated and distinct understanding of the relationship between science and ideology, the powerful existence of ideology means there is a ceaseless struggle by historical materialist science not to become ideology and for historical materialist science to continually try and show the limitations of ideology at the level of theory and practice. For unless this theoretical labour is continued it will always be possible for historical materialist science to succumb to ideology and acquire its limitations, as with the popularity of idealist Marxist humanism.
Secondly, Watson argues that Althusser examines the Soviet Union on the basis of separation of the supposed healthy socialist economic base from the problematical political structure in order to gloss over the full extent of the counterrevolutionary activity of Stalinism. In reply to Watson, I would maintain that whilst politically supporting the Soviet Union as socialist, Althusser actually helps us to understand why a reactionary humanist ideology has become dominant in the USSR as a result of its historical conditions and the dynamic ideological interpretation:
“Now it is obvious that these conditions too, bear the characteristic mark of the USSR’s past and of its difficulties - not only the mark of the difficulties due to the period of the ‘cult of personality’, but also the mark of the more distant difficulties characteristic of the construction of ‘socialism in one country’, and in addition in a country economically and culturally ‘backward’ to start with. Among these ‘conditions’ first place must be given to the ‘theoretical’ conditions inherited from the past” (ibid p238).
This begs the question as to whether ‘socialism in one country’ helps to generate a utopian ideology, and whether this might represent an ideology of a new ruling elite or class. Althusser also notes that: “The present disproportion of the historical tasks to their conditions explains the recourse to ideology” (ibid p238). Hence recourse to ideology relates to “problems of the form of economic, political and cultural organisation that corresponds to the level of development attained by socialism’s productive forces” (ibid p238).
So whilst Althusser restricts the problem of the cult of personality to the level of the superstructure, he is also indicating that there is a deep and profound ideological crisis of the system, and which is based upon antagonisms at the level of relations between the cultural, political and the economic. What he is effectively describing within the limits of his own Stalinist ideology is the role of ideology in propping up a contradictory and crisis-prone bureaucratic system. The very utopian character of this ideology means that ideological crisis of the system could facilitate vast political changes within the USSR. Althusser could not explicitly conclude about the utopian humanist ideology of the elite that it was unreal, because it was an idealist counterrevolutionary expression of reactionary social interests, but he helps us to arrive at this conclusion. Althusser never politically broke with Stalinism, but at the level of historical materialism and ideology he shows the limitations of Stalinism.
Thirdly, Watson argues that Althusser had a static and contemplative theory of knowledge. However, as I tried to show in relation to his conception of theoretical practice, the possibility to develop knowledge is not a rigid and completed process. It is entirely possible that knowledge may remain ideological and limited, or that it is undiscovered in a raw and untheorised state. In order to arrive at the finished product of new knowledge it is necessary to develop theory as consciously and systematically as possible if the various contradictions and difficulties of knowledge production are to be overcome.
This is not an idealist exercise divorced from the class struggle. Rather it is an essential part of developing the theory and practice of international proletarian revolution.