Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 20:03:37 +0200
Subject: M-G: Re: Althusser and the epistemological break


Paul Z and Jon BM talk about breaks in thinking. Jon characterizes
Althusser's view of the break as the

>> heroic moment at which someone manages to free themselves from the
>> presuppositions of conventional ideology.

Now this just sharpens the idiocy of placing any such break in Marx's work
between Grundrisse say and Capital. For the young Marx, conventional
ideology had several strands. The main one he confronted was Hegelian
philosophy, which subsumed all the others basically, particularly
Kantianism. But there was also the concrete ideology of the forces in
struggle, represented mainly by utopian socialism exemplified by Owen,
Fourier and Proudhon. Marx had broken with all these conventional
ideologies by dint of head-on confrontation and an incredible collective
effort together with Engels and Marx's other comrades-in-arms by the time
of the publication of the Communist Manifesto.

On the basis of this break with conventional ideology two very important
new obstacles were confronted, neither in the form of subjective
contradictions *within* Marx.

One was theoretical, in the form of classical British political economy.
This was broken, not within Marx's head, because it didn't reign there, but
out in the field of scientific enquiry and struggle, where it did reign. by
Marx's whole concentrated, conscious labour in the field of economic
theory, culminating in Capital, volume one of which he saw through
publication himself, and the remaining volumes of which were shepherded to
publication by Engels and the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. There were a
number of clarifications that emerged during this work, but none deserved
the label of epistemological break. The biggest came very early, in the
fifties I think, and constituted the discovery of the distinction between
labour-power as the value-producing commodity and labour as the measure of
value.

This was a break-through of enormous significance, but not an
epistemological break.

The other challenge faced by the social forces of dialectical materialism,
headed by Marx and Engels, was anarchism -- utopian, non-scientific,
voluntaristic, ahistorical, class-substitution socialism in the form of a
living revolutionary movement. This challenge was the main concrete
obstacle to forming a mass socialist revolutionary international party
capable of transforming bourgeois society into socialist society, and
preoccupied the life of the First International. This struggle was resolved
by the experience of the Paris Commune, which not even an Althusser would
have the face to describe as en epistemological break.

So all in all, let's face it -- a break-through is not the same as an
epistemological break.

Paul's position as he states it is peculiar. He writes: "By recognizing
breaks in Marx's thinking we open up ourselves to "breaks" and liberation".
I would say that by refusing to recognize development in Marx's ideas (ie
breakthroughs such as the labour vs labour-power distinction) we put
ourselves in the Maoist pillory of eternal scientific shame as juju
worshippers and superstitious nuts. By needing to recognize development in
some authority to justify our own development we reveal ourselves as
helpless infants. This seems to me to be putting Stalinist dummy-sucking as
the natural state for a revolutionary socialist worker. I can't believe
Paul means this.

And to need some Althusserian mumbo-jumbo to rid ourselves and our parties
of "the conservative understanding that people and class situations are
fixed and unchanging" is also to bow to Stalinist petrification. The
simplest genuine Marxist schooling starting with the Communist Manifesto
would otherwise make mincemeat of any such "fixed and unchanging"
conceptions of history.

I'd be much more interested in Paul's account of his own "break in
thinking". This would be worth knowing about and could certainly be used in
political work. Projecting some abstract ideology of "epistemological
breaks" into Marx's theoretical and political work on the other hand is
just "muddying the water to make it look deep", as someone quoted the other
day.

Cheers,

Hugh



>Jon has a good point.  By recognizing breaks in Marx's thinking we open up
>ourselves to "breaks" and liberation.  We take away the conservative
>understanding that people and class situations are fixed and unchanging.
>
>Paul
>
>P.S. I myself feel I went through a break in thinking.   As Marxists, we
>must encourage "breaks".
>
>*************************************************************************
>Paul Zarembka, supporting the  RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY  Web site at
>http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka,  and using OS/2 Warp.
>*************************************************************************
>
>
>On Sun, 13 Apr 1997, Jon Beasley-Murray wrote:
>
>> Though I agree with much of what Andrew says about Althusser's division
>> between the young and the mature Marx, I think there is a more important
>> point at issue.
>>
>> The epistemological break (this break supposedly made by Marx) is also
>> Althusser's vision of revolution.  Indeed, far from Althusser here
>> *removing* agency from the picture, this break represents for him the
>> heroic moment at which someone manages to free themselves from the
>> presuppositions of conventional ideology.
>>
>> The notion of this break appears all over the place in Althusser (ie. not
>> just in the distinction between young and mature Marx).  See perhaps
>> especially his article on "The 'Piccolo Teatro': Bertolazzi and Brecht":
>>
>> ". . . suddenly everything is reversed: Nina turns on her father, on the
>> illusions and lies he has fed her, on the myths which will kill him.  But
>> not here; for she is going to rescue herself, all alone, for that is the
>> only way.  She will leave this world of night and poverty and enter the
>> other one, where pleasure and money reign.  The Togasso was right.  She
>> will pay the price, she will sell herself, but she will be on the other
>> side, on the side of freedom and truth.  The hooters sound.  Here fatehr
>> ahs embraced her and departed, a broken man.  The hooters still sound.
>> Erect, Nina goe out into the daylight."  (_For Marx_ 133)
>>
>> Take care
>>
>> Jon
>>
>> Jon Beasley-Murray
>> Literature Program
>> Duke University
>> jpb8-AT-acpub.duke.edu
>> http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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