Re: [Marxism] The Return of Althusser

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 24 Jun 2006 17:06:03 +1200 (NZST) Scott Hamilton
<shamresearch@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> http://readingthemaps.blogspot.com/2006/06/return-of-althusser.html
>  Send instant messages to your online friends
> http://au.messenger.yahoo.com
> ________________________________________________
> YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
> Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Set your options at:
> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism
>

In any case there is something to be said for the remarks that
G.A. Cohen made in his foreword to his  *Karl Marx's Theory
of History: A Defence*.  There after detailing some of the
positive contributions of the Althusserians to Marxism
(which for Cohen included the reemphasis on Marx's
more mature writings like *Capital* rather than the earlier
writings like the 1844 Manuscripts and the attention that
Althusser and his followers paid to historical materialism) then
proceeded to note what he regarded as some of their more negative
attributes.
Writing thus:

"Above all, I found much of  *Lire Capital*  critically vague.  It
is perhaps a matter for regret that logical positivism, with its
insistence on precision of intellectual commitment, never
caught on in Paris.  Anglophone philosophy left logical positivism
behind long ago, but it is lastingly the better for having engaged
with it.  The Althusserian vogue could have unfortunate consequences
for Marxism in Britain, where lucidity is a precious heritage, and
where it is not generally supposed that a theoretical statement,
to be one, must be hard to comprehend."

Alas, one consequence of Cohen's work was to revive the
very sort of mechanical materialism that Althusser had
rejected along with humanist Marxism, but which
the young Jerry Cohen had imbibed along with his
mother's milk, having been born and raised within
a milieu of the Canadian CP. Cohen, himself, years
later came to see the inadequacy of this type of historical
materialism but seemed to draw the conclusion that the
problem laid with historical materialism in general rather
than with the specific variety of historical materialism
that he had embraced.

Certainly there is some merit in certain ideas that
the Althusserians came up with. The quest to create
a anti-teleogical materialism was certainly a valid one,
although it seems to me that it is perhaps people like
Alan Carling, who have been influenced by Analytical
Marxism, who have come closest to fulfilling this
quest with the proposal that we analogize historical
materialism with Darwinian biology, which in the natural
sciences represents our best example of an anti-teleogical
materialism.  The kind of selectionist historical materialism
that is advocated by people like Alan Carling and
Andrew Collier seems to come closest to fulfilling
Althusser's goals.





________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism