Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 08:50:37 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Re: Althusser = Spinoza -- true???


Jim F writes:

>If you ever read any of Althusser's works such as his *For Marx* or his
>*Reading Capital* you would quickly realize that Althusser regarded
>Spinoza as the true precursor of Marx rather than Hegel.  To take the
>latter as Marx's precursor as most Marx commentators have done was
>in Althusser's view to commit oneself to the kind of Hegelian-Feuerbachian
>humanistic interpretation of Marx that Althusser was concerned with
>repudiating as 'ideological' rather than 'scientific'.  I leave to the
>dedicated Althusserians on this list to explain how all this connects with
>Spinozism. However, I should note that it has not just been Althusserians who
>have seen Spinoza as a precursor to Marx.  Plekhanov, the father of
>Russian Marxism, viewed Spinoza as a precursor to Marx though unlike
>Althusser he did not go to the extreme of attempting to use Spinoza to
>repudiate Hegel and Feuerbach.  He did, however, go so far as to
>characterize Marxism as a species of Spinozism.

Thanks.

Now I have no problem with seeing Spinoza as a precursor and soul brother
to Marx -- there's the same unified grasp of a universal whole, the same
ruthless logicality and the same passionate intensity to get to the bottom
of things. And there is a sense in which he is more akin to Marx than are
Hegel (and especially Kant) and that is that they have their noses much
more stuck up against the contradiction between Spirit and Reality/Nature
(Geist and Wirklichkeit/Natur), while he cheerfully locates himself beyond
it in a bold use of the perspective of eternity.

But it seems to me Althusser is just using these similarities dishonestly
to shove Marx back into the fold of the enlightenment materialists, in
other words to vulgarize the whole philosophical development relating
dialectical understanding to the natural and social world, that is the
fusion of science with bourgeois revolution which culminated in (Kant and)
Hegel.

By removing the "ideological" underpinnings (most notably the Grundrisse
and the earlier confrontations with Hegel etc) Althusser removes the (in
Aristotelean terms) dialectical aspects of Marx's logical process to try
and restrict it to the no-brainer (relatively speaking) automatism of
analytical aspects. The reason for this of course being the imperative need
to remove any inquiry into basic assumptions regarding the proletarian
socialist movement and its ideology given the leading role of Stalinism at
the time and Althusser's dependence on it.

It's remarkable how rapidly both Althusser and Gramsci fall to pieces once
dialectical questioning of the role of class leadership comes into play --
the purportedly objective processes they take as axiomatic just unravel as
the real policy decisions of real political parties and currents come into
focus.

But both serve as expedient crutches for those currents that fail to see
the revolutionary historical character of the working class under
capitalism and thus have an equally fatalistic and sceptical fundamental
position on society, economics, politics and historical development.

Funny how difficult it should be to get to grips with thinking agency and
the conditions for its activities.

Cheers,

Hugh





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