Subject: RE: AUT: Grundrisse/MBM
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 17:31:19 +0100




> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Harry M. Cleaver [SMTP:hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu]
> Sent:	Wednesday, September 16, 1998 9:49 PM
> To:	aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject:	RE: AUT: Grundrisse/MBM
Harry wrote:

[snip]

> 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.)
> 
[snip]

At the risk of belabouring a point already made. Althusser came up with
the theory of an "epistemological break" in Marx's thought that marked
his transition  to (discovery of?) "true Dialectical Materialism". In
this way he could dismiss the (humanist) ideological challenge put
forward (in France) by Sartre et al using the 1844 Manuscripts etc. as
being based on Marx's "immature" and hence "unscientific" work. Capital,
for Althusser represented the product of true "scientific" dialectical
materialism. The discovery of the Grundrisse (not widely available until
after WW2) kind of blew a hole in Althusser's defence because it
portrayed an "immature humanist" Marx long after Althusser's mythical
epistemological break was supposed to have taken place. As far as I'm
aware Althusser never even attempted to come back from this one.
However, I think by this period (78 - 79) Althusser's brief but
significant ideological hegemony had already passed. I'd love to hear
more on his motives for giving Toni the chance to use his own lectures
to bury him, though.


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