Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 20:10:38 -0700 From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org> Subject: ALTHUSSER 'FOR MARX' AGAINST THEORETICAL HUMANISM I shall return to the intermediate chapters, but for now I will discuss the final chapter of Louis Althusser's FOR MARX (Pantheon, 1969). The text for this evening is humanism, particularly socialist humanism, which is on the agenda in the 1960s (or, as we would say in today's infantile culture of narcissism, "on our plate"). It turns out Althusser's quarrel is not with humanism as a real thing, but with humanism as a scientific concept. Since Marx's epistemological break left all such theoretical talk behind, humanism is an ideological, not a scientific concept. The core of Althusser's argument can be found on p. 228-9. Talk of the human essence is inherently idealist (not to mention its bourgeois pedigree), postulating the empiricism of the subject and the absolute givenness of the concrete subject. Marx drove the money-changers of the human essence out of all corners of the temple of science. Marxism preserves humanism as an ideology but wipes it clean out of theory: "Strictly in respect to theory, therefore, one can and must speak openly of _Marx's theoretical anti-humanism_, and see in this _theoretical anti-humanism_ the absolute (negative) precondition of the (positive) knowledge of the human world itself, and of its practical transformation. It is impossible to _know_ anything about men except on the absolute precondition that the philosophical (theoretical) myth of man is reduced to ashes." (p. 229) How this conclusion follows is a mystery to me, given the vagueness of the characteristics of and the demarcation between "Philosophy" (myth, ideology) and "science" (theory). This sloppy and childish thinking does not induce much respect. But back to the main event. What, then, is ideology? "There can be no question of attempting a profound definition of ideology here. It will suffice to know very schematically that an ideology is a system (with its own logic and rigour) of representations (images, myths, ideas or concepts, depending on the case) endowed with a historical existence and role within a given society. Without embarking on the problem of the relations between a science and its (ideological) past, we can say that ideology, as a system of representations, is distinguished from science in that in it the practico-social function is more important than the theoretical function (function as knowledge)." (p. 231) Please savor this paragraph at length to catch the full impact, for Althusser here confesses the bankruptcy and the uselessness of his entire book in this one precious passage. No, there is no question of attempting a profound definition of ideology. There is no attempt at differentiating or characterizing the cognitive structures or functions of the widely different forms "ideology" can take (from myth to philosophical concept). We haven't a clue as to how science is distinguished from ideology other than with the latter the practico-social function is paramount and the theoretical function is nil. What an abject confession of one's uselessness! The one intriguing aspect of this chapter is that Althusser explains the necessity of ideology in all social formations, as one's lived (not necessarily reflective) relation to the world. This is potentially a productive notion, but leaving it at the level of a "practico-social" function does not tell us about its cognitive status or function, and, let me stress once more, does not provide a differentiation for a range of cognitive organizations and functions of concepts within this broad-brushed category of the non-scientific. This is Althusser's fatal weakness, and don't you forget it. The whole chapter dances around the contemporary USSR's task of overcoming the legacy of Stalin. That Althusser is trapped in the claustrophobic world of the French Communist Party (for all his fascination with Mao: an even more restrictive conceptual universe) is evidenced by how he gingerly deals with the topic, even while questioning the theoretical status of the cult of personality as an explanation for what went wrong (p. 240). Well, having just read a 270-page book whose entire information content can be boiled down to five pages tops, I must say there are a few interesting ideas, though they are not developed sufficiently to be very useful. As time permits, I will return to earlier chapters and extract the paltry grams of real gold from the vast mine of fool's gold. [R. Dumain, 28 April 1995] --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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