Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 15:49:29 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: RE: AUT: Grundrisse/MBM


On Wed, 16 Sep 1998, Doug Henwood wrote:

> Gerald Levy wrote:
> 
> >This, of
> >course, doesn't negate the idea that MBM was in part directed against
> >Althusser (and the structuralists and Stalinists).
> 
> Could you or anyone else talk more about this?
> 
> Doug

Doug: Althusser, as I'm sure you know, was a theoretician of the French
Communist Party, one of the more "orthodox" parties in Europe. His READING
CAPITAL in which he brought together some Levi-Strauss structuralism with
some Freudian conepts was aimed at re-legitimizing-updating an "orthodox"
reading of Marx in the wake of 1) the revelations of the crimes of STalin
and the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution and 2) the spread of Marx's
early work, e.g., the 1844 Manuscripts, which was widely received and used
instead of more orthodox traditional readings of Marx. Thus Althusser's
attack on the early work as "immature" and his celebration of CAPITAL as
the "mature" Marx, stripped of any fuzzy Hegelian thinking. At the same
time structuralism was brought in to recast the orthodox focus on
"objective" conditions, laws of motion, etc. 

Now, Toni came to lecture in Athusser's Seminar at "l'Ecole Normale" in
Paris partly (I think) through the intersession of Yann Moulier (now a
professor at that school and for a long time a friend and interpreter of
Toni's work into French and Portuguese) --I'll have to ask Yann about
this-- and partly, I'm guessing because Althusser needed a break. The year
was 1978, months before Toni and thousands of others would be arrested on
trumpted up charges in April 1979.  

Now, Toni's work within the current of the Italian New Left had developed
(like Tronti's, like Panzieri's etc) in debate with the more orthodox
Communist Party of Italy theoreticians (in fact Tronti would reinter the
Party later). So much of their work involved a critique of various
orthodox positions and analyses --long before Toni went to Paris. When you
study the evolution of the Italian New Left writings you can see a
systematic effort to find/develop a reading of Marx which could be helpful
to the struggle against that of the Communist party theorists who were
justifying policies of collaboration with capital. Steve should speak to
this if need be because he has done even more work on this than I and his
dissertation tells much of the story. 

When Toni came to Paris he was bringing the results of several years of
work within that effort to develop an alternative approach to Marx. I
think his focus on the Grundrisse was motivated by the centrality of
CAPITAL within the orthodox camp and the relative neglect of the
Grundrisse. The Grundrisse gave him an oblique way of taking on
Althusser's reading (and the politics that lay behind and within it)
without entering into a direct confrontation over CAPITAL. (Which I had
done about the same time in READING CAPITAL POLITICALLY --a book the
manuscript of which Toni read in 1978.)

As far as I know there was no direct confrontation between Toni and Louis.
I don't think Louis attended the lectures. Once upon a time, after
Althusser died, I had occasion to puruse his bookshelves in his home.
There I made the interesting discovery that while many volumes were
extensively worked through and marked up with underlinings, marginal notes
etc., Marx Beyond Marx did not appear to have ever been opened; nor, if I
remember right, any other volume by Negri. To all appearances, from such
evidence and the publishing record, Althusser never "took on" this
alternative approach. Indeed there was a letter I remember in which he
discussed how he never responded to critiques, although he did make an
exception in the case, I believe, of Edward Thompson's blistering attack
in Poverty of Theory, but then perhaps it was another English Marxist
critique, I'm not sure anymore.

It is my impression that Althusser's influence was never as great in Italy
as it was in many other places including Latin America, North America,
Europe and some parts of Asia. Orthodox Marxism in Italy had Gramsci
afterall whose thought was much more subtle and appealing than Althussers
and of course the Italian communist party was one of the least orthodox
and least attached to the Soviet Union of any of the European parties.

Hopes this helps,

Harry


............................................................................
Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173  USA
Phone Numbers: (hm)  (512) 478-8427
               (off) (512) 475-8535   Fax:(512) 471-3510
E-mail: hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu
Cleaver homepage: 
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index.html
Chiapas95 homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
Accion Zapatista homepage:
http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
............................................................................



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