Althusser's Marxism

by Alex Callinicos

Alex Callinicos places Althusser's work in the context of the two main traditions of Marxist philosophy, Engels and the orthodox "dialectical materialism" of the Second International, Lukács and the Hegelian Marxism of the 1920's.

He provides an introduction to the entire range of Althusser's ideas and traces, for the first time in English, their development and transformation. The result is an attempt to judge Althusser, not simply as a philosopher, but as a Marxist.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy

140 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1980

About the author

Alexander Theodore Callinicos, a descendant through his mother of Lord Acton, is a political theorist and Director of the Centre for European Studies at King's College London. He holds both a BA and a DPhil from Oxford University.

Reviews

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tidy summation of an important left theorist.

Engels in the Anti-Duhring had developed the basic Marxist philosophical position (10). After, we see increasingly ambitious elaboration, aptly summarized in the opening sections of this text, leading through the Second International, Lenin, Western Marxism (with much attention to Gramsci and Lukacs). Althusser’s work emerges as a “critique of the humanist interpretation of Marx” (31), which arose from the 1930s discoveries of the 1844 manuscripts and the 1858 manuscripts.

Althusser’s initial point was that ‘humanist’ interpretation of the manuscripts is rooted in an untenable empiricist epistemology as well as facile assumptions about Marx’s use of terms in the texts in question (id.). For this critique, Althusser’s initial task is to develop a “new theory of reading” (33), involving “not a direct relation between reader and text, but rather a dialectic between the theory whose principles govern the reading and the theory contained in the text” (id.)—wherein there may be “no innocent reading.” In so doing, Althusser adopts Bachelard’s notion of a ‘problematic’—this is “not in any specific propositions which the theory involves, or the intentions of the theory’s author, but in its structure, at the level of the way in which the problems that it is the function of the theory to solve are posed” (34).

it is extractable by means of a symptomatic reading. It is called symptomatic because the problematic of a theory is complex and contradictory, involving dislocations between different levels. These contradictions are reflected on the text’s surface, as symptoms of a complex structure, in gaps, lapses, silences, absences, which are determined by the way in which the contradictory levels of the theory are articulated upon each other. (35)

Callinicos regards this as “very obscure,” influenced by Freud’s dream arguments (36), but also arising out of Marx’s mature works. With this sort of interpretive theory in mind, Althusser locates a decisive epistemological break between the problematics of very early and proper early Marx (37). Working the same sort of issue as Kuhn, Althusser regards ‘science’ as “a process of continual internal transformation, which at times will involve thoroughgoing recastings of the problematic such as the revolution in theoretical physics inaugurated by Einstein. An ideology is a closed system, whereas a science is essentially open” (38).

Good coverage of the overdetermination thesis, which was to “sum up the character of the Marxist dialectic” (46), based on the conjuncture concept (47), related to “structural causality”: “Both his own theory of overdetermination and Marx’s theory of fetishism lead Althusser to the conclusion that the appearances are not something dispensable, mere subjective illusion, but the necessary form reality takes” (52).

Good coverage thereafter of the famous ideology and ISA theory (60 et seq.). From this, the thesis becomes that “Marxism rests on a notion of history as a process without a subject” (66), which is fairly radical within Marxism itself:

This is how Hegel set the stage for Marx. All that was required to develop a dialectic that would open up history to scientific knowledge was to transform the structure of the dialectic, to remove its peculiar subject, the self-reflection of the process, by abolishing the category whose function it was to realize that subject in the process, the negation of the negation. (69)

Callinicos explains that “the decisive point came when Marx began, in 1845, to develop concepts like forces and relations of production capable of grasping history as a process without a subject” (id.). The implication is tremendous: both history as “a process whose end is not fixed in its origins” and “a rejection of any notion of human nature” (id.)—“the burden of Althusser’s celebrated ‘theoretical anti-humanism’” (id.). Overall, “no such thing as the individual as such, but that each mode of production produces its own mode of individuality” (70).

Thus the concept of history as a process without a subject and the theory of ideology find their connection in the idea that ideology is the way in which men and women are formed in order to participate in a process of which they are not the makers, and that ideology performs this function by giving them the illusion that history was made for them. (70)

Althusser’s best achievement, for Callinicos, is “a version of the dialectic according to which history is determined not predetermined” (71).

Plenty more, including Althusser’s difficult relation with Stalinism (86 et seq), which results in the recommendation that “Althusser’s position as such must be rejected by Marxists” (102). That said, I still love Lenin and Philosophy, which includes the ISA article (absolutely required reading) and For Marx, which has the overdetermination article (also required). Reading Capital is extra credit.

[Tannishka Singh · Rating 1 out of 5]

A horrid "introduction" to Althusser which utterly fails to understand Althusser's theoretical revolution launched in complete fidelity to Marx's theoretical edifice since Callinicos fails to grasp key Althusserian innovations like structural causality, overdetermination, etc. but it shouldn't be surprising since even a brief acquaintance with the Callinicos's work will show that he is a revisionist utterly fascinated by the bourgeois concept of formal equality which Marx so vehemently and rigorously criticised throughout his life as being a bourgeois illusion which can never be fulfilled since it mystifies the content of bourgeois society built upon the exploitation of the proletariat.

[Amar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every second of reading this is absolute torture. I cannot tell if it is due to the density of the material or if, like Althusser, Callinicos doesn't know how to write.

Once you understand what he's trying to communicate, it is highly informative.

[Manolo Ferrer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dreadful waste of time reading this.