>The European communists did something that led the societies they ruled a
>lot further away from utopia than were the social democracies of western
>Europe... or even the not-very-social democracy that is the United States.
>That disaster seems to have had *something* to do with (i) contempt for the
>ethics of political communication ("ideology"), (ii) contempt for all forms
>of due process ("state apparatus"), and (iii) contempt for human happiness
>("humanism"). As far as I understand Althusser, he was leading the charge
>on all three...
>
>Brad DeLong
This is absurd. Althusser's primary focus was on the problematic of the
base/superstructure, first dealt with in the 1962 article "Contradiction
and Overdetermination". Basically this article is a call to arms against
economic determinism, a bane of Marxism throughout the 20th century.
Economic determinism basically is a belief that social movements and
beliefs are reflections of underlying economic structures. In its most
sophisticated version, you get Charles Beard's "Economic Interpretation of
the US Constitution" which attempted to explain the various clauses and
subclauses in terms of the different economic interests of various
constituencies of the American bourgeoisie. Now Beard was a Progressivist
historian and didn't know any better. Stalin, a "Marxist", had no excuse
when he elaborated his "3rd Period" theory, which stated that the Great
Depression and the rise of fascism would create the contradictions
necessary to turn the masses decisively toward revolutionary socialism.
This undialectical approach had much in fact to do with the victory of
Hitler and the destruction of the German Communist Party.
Althusser believed that it is a mistake to regard Marxism as a simple
inversion of Hegel. If Hegel maintained that the dialectical unfolding of
Ideas in history determine social relations and the state, then a simple
view of Marx would tend to conclude that social relations determine ideas.
Althusser is correct to point out that the relationship between social and
economic relations is not "unmediated". Ideas, beliefs, customs, etc.
become part of social relationships and can have as much material reality
as a job or an apartment lease.
Althusser, interestingly enough, doesn't quote Marx as a counter-example to
economic determinism. He cites Engels, rumored to be a "distorter" of Marx,
who, along with Lenin, has been the favorite whipping-boy of academic
Marxists for most of the century, including most folks on this list. Engels
said, "The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the
superstructure -- the political forms of the class struggle and its
results: to wit constitutions established by the victorious class after a
successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and then even the reflexes of all
these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political,
juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further
development into systems of dogmas -- also exercise their influence upon
the course of the historical struggles, and in many cases preponderate in
determing their form..."
Althusser, as I read him, is somebody who is urging the dogmatically
minded--in his case, the French CP--to "go back" to Marx and Engels and
forget about the one-dimensional malarkey coming from the pages of
L'Humanitie. Good for Althusser.
Trotskyism and Maoism have also been a fertile ground for economic
determinism. In their case, it has taken the most virulent form of
"workerism". This is a belief that any social movement that does not rise
directly out of the workplace at the point of production is to be
suspected, if not viewed as reactionary. For a brief time, the SWP rejected
"workerism" in the 1960's and 70's, but succumbed to it in the 1980's. It
is the kiss of death for a socialist organization.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
