Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 21:20:26 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: RE: AUT: Grundrisse/MBM


Paul Bowman wrote:

> 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. <snip>

But Althusser didn't claim that the "epistemological break" was complete
at the time he wrote _Capital_ (let alone the _Grundrisse_). Indeed, in
_Reading Capital_, he and Balibar claimed that _Capital_ was infected with
"Hegelianisms" (consequently, they -- like Sweezy -- argued that Ch. 1
should be skipped). The only genuine "Marxist" (i.e. post-epistemological
break) work that Marx wrote, according to Althusser, was the (very brief)
"Marginal Notes on Wagner". 

btw, does anyone have any thoughts on Toni's essay "Notes on the Evolution
of the Later Althusser" in Antonio Callari and David F. Ruccio ed.
_Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory: Essays in the
Althusserian Tradition_ (Wesleyan University Press, 1996, pp. 51-68)?

Jerry



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