Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 23:46:38 -0800
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: Re: RICHARD GUNN VS HISTORICAL MATERIALISM (OPEN MARXISM V.2)


I generally don't read the sort of literature you cite (except for
a devastating hatchet job on the British Althusserians I once
mentioned here), so I haven't much to say about it.  But I will
try to comment on the following:

>Ralph, what do you think of such attempts to read Marxism in a
>structuralist manner and then, in a pragmatist - open - turn,
>either advocate rejecting Marxism entirely or adopting a new,
>"open" version of Marxism, something unrecognisable as Marxism?


I think the question answers itself.  First comes the caricature,
then the self-professed brilliant alternative to dehumanizing
systemic thinking.  I think this is what Cornelius Castoriadis has
done in his later years.  I'm not well-versed in the work of Negri
or Cleaver, but I have my doubts.

>Just how important is this "dualism of class structure and
>struggle, between structuralism and voluntarism, between abstract
>laws and subjectivity"?

The dualism is counter-productive, as such dualisms normally are,
but just as bad are the trumpetings of superficial schematists who
boast about transcending those dualisms.  (Marx had a few words
for such people himself.)  It sees that structure/agency is one of
those celebrated dialectical contradictions.  It doesn't hurt to
analyze it logically, or keep in mind the complementarity as a
guiding interpretive principle, but such abstract considerations
do not require entire volumes of recondite pseudo-theorizing.
These principles can be stated reasonably clearly and then one
should move on to analyze of concrete social situations.

I can't recall whether you have been on the list long enough to
have experienced my vitriolic contempt for Althusser, who has done
ore harm to Marxist theory in the past 35 years than any other
single individual.  Inasmuch as I understand Althusser's remarks
you cite on the structure/agency pseudo-problem, I agree with
them.  I think Althusser is hypocritical, since he has created
more pseudo-problems than any other Marxist philosopher.

The best capsulized critique of Althusser I have seen is in Jack
Lindsay's THE CRISIS IN MARXISM (1981).  He eviscerates Althusser
in a single concise chapter (and Adorno in another).  Lindsay
(1900-1990) was an interesting fellow.  He started out as a poet
and printer, who learned dialectics from William Blake, and then
he joined the Popular Front in the 1930s.  He was a remarkably
talented man who saw the world whole and sought to synthesize all
knowledge, including the sciences as well as the humanities.  And
he wrote so crisply and clearly about the most abstruse
philosophical matters.  If only the French and heir imitators
would learn to communicate.


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