On Althusser

[davidmci@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (David McInerney)]

I will try to answer all of the responses to my posts on Althusser in this
one post -- quite frankly, I'm getting behind in my work and my habit of
responding to each post individually seems to multiply the replies I get.

Firts things first.  In Jukka's reply he says in reply to me:

>> "dim"  Is this an example of parapraxis, Jukka?  Heh heh heh.
>
>What is parapraxis?

A parapraxis is simply the infamous "Freudian slip".  Zizek uses this term
from time to time.  I was having a little joke here.  I think you ment
"obscure" -- in English "dim" can mean "obscure" but more often it is used
in the sense of "not bright" -- which can be also interpreted as "thick",
"stupid", etc.  This is more clear if I cite the passage from my first
reply to you in greater length:

>>I tend to believe at the moment that Slovenians
>>are trying to show how avoid 'mechanistic' and 'deterministic'
>>conceptions of subject without falling into voluntarism (that's
>>simplistically said). That they are doing by their quite unorthodox and
>>dim syntheses of Lacan and Hegel.<cut>
>
>"dim"  Is this an example of parapraxis, Jukka?  Heh heh heh.  They are very
>unorthodox in many ways with Hegel, but also very perceptive.

My apologies for this little joke!  But, as we are discussing Lacanism
here, I thought it was worth making.  See, not all errors are slips
(parapraxes)!

Jukka, I now understand your other points better too.  You are saying that
Hegelianism is firmly ingrained in Finnish intellectual culture, right?
That you are fundamentally in agreeance with Bourdieu on his points about
structure and subjectivity, right?  That you prefer Foucault's approach to
discourse to deconstructionist "discourse-analysis", right?

I was being somewhat polemical when I made the "masochism" quip.  I've read
Lacan too, and his writing style is atrocious, one could almost say
deliberately intended to create a community of scholastic Lacanophiles,
almost a form of discipline in that by the time you understand it, you've
taken so much of it on board that you are part of the Lacanian community.
I was once told that to say that you understand Lacan means that you have
read him for ten years in the original French, all the seminars, etc.  You
would have to be a devoted Lacanian to consider such a task worth the time,
don't you think?

I am unrepentant about my "sausage factory" remark. Zizek takes Hitchcock,
Plato, Shakespeare, Hegel, Marx, and everyone else besides and then
proceeds to subject them to his analysis which basically *redescribes* his
object in obscure Lacanian jargon.  In my view this obscures much more than
it reveals.  His analysis of nationalism is especially poor, although I
once thought it had merit.  Is there a Zizekian Lacanian here on the list?
Perhaps s/he could provide a piece to the list on Zizek's theory and its
application to fascism?  On anti-Semitism, as opposed to fascism as a
movement, I do think that Zizek does have something there worth reading (in
_Metastases of Enjoyment_) but how that is to be understood in a way that
enables us to differentiate between forms of racism I do not know.

As to Rakesh's point, I think that Althusser is referring to the concept of
"value" as an abstraction, rather than some process of abstracting value.
He is referring to the way "value" is used in the chapter on the analysis
of the commodity.  Dominique Lecourt, in his piece, speaks of "abstract
labour" as a Hegelian "substance", and as the basis for Marx's formalism.
Lecourt comments:

"In his great book _Essays on Marx's Theory of Value_ ... Isaak Rubin has
shown clearly how the conception of "abstract labour" as "substance" of
value -- the very core of his theory -- can, in Marx's thought, be ascribed
to the Hegelian conception of the relationship between "form" and
"content": "In Hegel's philosophy, content is not a thing in itself, to
which form adheres to from the outside.  Rather, content itself, in the
course of its development, gives birth to the form that was already
contained in it in a latent state.  The form necessarily arises from the
substance of value." (Rubin 1977, p. 165)  I am constrained to limit myself
to a few indications, but we know that all of Volume 1 of _Capital_ springs
from this identification of "abstract labour" with the substance of value,
by a supposedly deductive path which is given as development from the
simple to the complex.  Rubin, like [Gerald] Cohen in his own way,
underlines the important critique of this mode of exposition which, in each
occurrance, plays the dissociation of form and content off against the
mystifications of bourgeois political economy to mark the transitory and
thus perishable character of form.  They mention quite rightly that the
return toward "abstract labour" as "substance of value" shatters the
implicit presuppositions of the aforementioned political economy.

However, with a view to some remarks that have been led to make on the
question of technology, it could be asked whether this critique can be
considered as radical and revolutionary as Marx thought it, or whether it
is limited in its intellectual significance and thus also its practical
effects by a general philosophy of necessary progress, a product of the
"inversion" of Hegel. ...

In reality, it can be shown that, by breaking open the order of exposition
of _Capital_, which "holds" its fictive unity only at the price of
troubling silences and repeated theoretical subterfuges, what I will call a
*countermovement* of Marx's thought is allowed to appear.  This
countermovement manifests itself most clearly in the chapter on "Primitive
Accumulation" as well as in the section on "The Working Day": presented in
a different way each time, so that, abandoning the normative Hegelian
exposition of the development of forms, Marx exposes the historical,
concrete, violent, and bloody conditions of the confrontation between free
workers (dispossed of their means of production) and those whom he calls
"the men with crowns," a confrontation that is a fact absolutely impossible
to deduce from value, which it actually presupposes.  But Marx, who
nonetheless was able to recognise illustrious predecessors in Epicurus and
Machiavelli, never formulated the theory of that confrontation; he took
refuge in the Hegeliann conception of becoming ..." (Lecourt, 'Marx in the
Sieve of Darwin', pp. 25-26.  The internal quote is from a French edition
of Rubin, the English is I. I. Rubin ; _Essays on Marx's theory of value_ ,
trans. M. Samardzija and F. Perlman, Detroit : Black & Red, 1972.)

I hope this provides you with some food for thought Rakesh.  Of course, if
you are interested in pursuing this further, then I suggest that you
consult the article by Lecourt.  This cite is just meant to give you some
idea of where Althusser's critique was heading.  It seems to be in the
direction of a Marxist economics more concerned with the class struggle.  I
guess the distance between Althusser and the CSE is not as great as the
latter think.  Of course, in those debates the Althusserian tendency always
appears in Bhaskarite guise in the form of Jessop's reading of regulation
theory.  I'm not an economist by any means so I'll leave you with it.

Moving on to Leo and Gerry on Althusser, the PCF and Althusser's students:
I don't think one can flatly say that Althusser opposed the student
rebellion -- the PCF did.  Althusser criticised the way in which the
students went about it -- in a pragmatist ultra-leftist fashion.  He did
cite Mao from time to time, both his philosophical works and also he made
reference to the Cultural Revolution.  But then again, (1) Althusser was
opposed to Krushchevite humanism in the PCF and (2) he always emphasied
that one should read texts forged in the class struggle (he said this about
Lenin, why not extend it to Mao?).  Poulantzas made Maoist references in an
appendix on the USSR and the Comintern in _Fascism and Dictatorship_ about
two roads, drawing on Bettelhiem (a Maoist friend of Althusser and
Poulantzas who influenced Macciochi).  I won't say too much about Ranciere
etc. -- I think I've said this already in a reply to Ralph.  On the PCF's
dropping of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" ALthusser wrote some
stuff criticiing the PCF in 1976-78 that made the point that this concept
was dropped *without discussion* of its theoretical content, which would be
damning for the PCF's party organisation.  This concept, for Althusser, is
closely tied to that of democratic centralism and parliamentary socialism.
Althusser argued that by dropping this without allowing a wide party debate
on the subject Georges Marchais and the other PCF leaders were avoiding
discussion about the PCF's lack of mass-line.  The change in Althusser's
attitiude toward the PCF is reflected in changes in his position on
"dialectical materialism" and the possibility of a "Marxist philosophy" and
in Althusser's (and Poulantzas's) growing interests in the party power
structure and their closer examination of the concepts of "mass line" and
"mass party" -- two things which they never ceased to believe in but only
reflected on theoretically post-1968 and post-1976 in light of PCF
failures.

As for Leo's long post -- thanks for this Leo, I'll try to answer you here.

1. I think Althusser's theoretical contributions are important, as is the
"theoretical space he opened up".  I like the later stuff (post-1967) much
more than _For Marx_ and _Reading Capital_ (blasphemy, some will say).  On
Althusser and the PCF I've already commented on this.

2. I agree with your points mostly.  I am in the process of writing a paper
on Poulantzas's theory of the nation at present (my thesis is on
nationalism) which will be ready on 12 Feb 1996.  I do think that
Poulantzas is a materialist, but not in any economistic manner, quite the
opposite.  I'll send a copy of the paper to the list when its done, that
will get the Poulantzas thread going!

3. I don't like the work of Laclau *or* Mouffe.  I reject their theory of
hegemony as a verb -- hegemony as a process.  I think of hegemony as an
adjective, as designating a state of affairs -- this is how Poulantzas uses
it.  I think that how that state of affairs comes about come be understood
without recourse to L&M's drivel (sorry L&M fans).  Basically, on L&M, I've
been there, done that, got nowhere.  On Lacanism, I reject Lacanism (the
Lacan religion) entirely.  But as I've stressed about so many theories,
this doesn't mean that in the texts of Lacan (or even the Lacanians) there
isn't something there.  It's a matter of the way you approach it, and of
whether you thoink its worth the time.  Basically, on Freud and Lacan, I
think that Freud made a great scientific discovery (as did Marx).  But a
scientific discovery does not imply that what they said about what they
discovered should be considered a science.  It does mean, however, that any
attempt to write something scientific about that object discovered must be
written in relation to these writings, and build on them.  That said, I
think that there is a lot more in Marx than there is in Freud.  Lacan tried
to turn Freudianism into a science, but he created a philosophy of
psychoanalysis instead, not dissimilar to Althusser's attempt to construct
a Marxist philosophy.  As time went on Lacan's philosophy bvecame more
abstract and schematic.  Althusser rejected this project in 1967, and
sought to specify the Marxist practice of intervening in philosophy as a
theoretical field.  Lacan was an idealist in so far as he created this
philosophical system, as Althusser was to the extent that he created the
Althusserian version of dialectical materialism in _Reading Capital_ and
_For Marx_.  And we should forget the effect of this system within
Poulantzas's _Political Power and Social Classes_, which can be seen
clearly in his introduction to that book.  This project survives as
Bhaskarism today.

4.  I didn't say any such thing.  I do find L&M (and Derrida) tiresome
though. Warren Montag has pointed out to me the merits of Pecheux's work on
linguistics (which does draw on Lacan) privately, and has suggetsed that I
read Pecheux's last book (only in French I'm afraid) which he claims is
very good.  I think DT is worth engaging with, its not as obscure as
Lacanism, so you wouldn't be wasting as much time if it turns out to be
useless.  With Jukka, I think that Foucault is very good and has a lot to
teach us.

5. On AM, I won't say much here.  If lived through a sizable number of AM
texts, nowbere near as many as Justin mind you, as I don't share his
enthusaism for AM.  Again, I recommend everyone to read Bardhan's little
book if they want to grasp the basics of RCM (i.e. Elster/Roemer) quickly.

6. I don't think I have any substantial points to make here -- basically, I
agree.

Well, I've got to get back to writing those reports and conference papers.
I've spent far too much time writing replies lately, so forgive me if I
take a while to respond to the next round.  Thanks to everyone who
commented on my posts on Althusser.


Mr. David McInerney,
Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences,
The Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T., AUSTRALIA  0200.
e-mail: davidmci@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; ph: (06) 249 2134; fax: (06) 249 3051




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