Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178

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Some Questions Concerning the Crisis of Marxist Theory and of the International Communist Movement

Louis Althusser

I feel very honoured and moved to be able to speak before you all today, thanks to the kind invitation of the Catalan College of Building Engineers and Technical Architects. This is the third time that I have spoken in Spain. The first time was in Granada, during Easter 1976. I gave a talk on whether or not we can speak of the existence of a Marxist philosophy. The second time was a few days later in Madrid, where I gave the same talk. Several thousand students came to each. In Granada there were too many people for a public debate, but in Madrid a discussion was possible thanks to the disposition of the venue’s management, and even despite the great number of students. They asked me questions on the French and Spanish political situation and the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the Twenty-Second Congress of the French Communist Party (PCF). I answered all of their questions, but I got the impres- sion that much of the audience thought that my talk was too much philosophy and not enough politics. I know that I am today speaking in a city where the popular and democratic forces have reconquered the right to wage their struggle out in the open, and that if today I can speak before you freely – and speak freely about politics – then I owe this to the struggle waged by the popular forces of Barcelona. And I know already that what I am about to say will be distorted by the TV and the papers, because – you know as well as I do – in Catalonia there is a certain degree of tolerance, but not freedom of expression. Today I can speak, but I am not certain that I will be able to do so in two weeks’ time. Besides – as you know perfectly well – in the eyes of the post-Franco government, the Communists do not have the same rights as everyone else. There is already a political project

Text of a talk given by Althusser at the Catalan College of Building Engineers and Technical Architects, 6 July 1976. Translated by David Broder.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi 10.1163/1569206X-12341385 Some Questions Concerning the Crisis of Marxist Theory 153 underway that envisages a pseudo-democratic future institutionalising the dis- crimination currently exercised against the Communists. So we are here, today, you and I, protected by the strength of the Catalan people, by the strength of the Catalan working class, by the strength of all Catalan democrats. I am not going to talk about French or Spanish political questions. I am not going to do what Lenin called a ‘concrete analysis of the concrete situation’. Everything has its proper place. What I want to speak to you about is a funda- mental question, one of absolutely essential importance to the class struggle: the question of the crisis of the international communist movement. I will not be speaking on the concrete problems of the class struggle in Spain, France, Italy, or any other country, because I am not capable of doing so. In order to speak of such things, I would need to have at hand a ‘concrete analysis of the concrete situation’, as Lenin called it, for each of these social formations, as well as for the class struggle on the international plane. But for the results of such concrete analysis to be available to us, it must already have taken place. While as far as I am aware the Communist Parties do in principle have the sci- ence of Marxist theory (historical materialism) available to them, and this sci- ence is also available to Marxists who are not Communists, they have still not managed to carry out the long and difficult work of making concrete analyses of the class struggle in each country. We only have general descriptions, which, even if they are not wrong, are still insufficient. But in order to wage the class struggle, with all its righteousness and strength, we need more than general descriptions, general evaluations, and general criteria. We have to enter into detail, that is to say, into the concrete, the concrete relations of class struggle – not only that of the working class and popular movements, but also and above all the class struggle waged by imperialism, in all fields, from the base to poli- tics and ideology. I say that because we know from the Marxist science of social formations (historical materialism) that the class struggle is not limited to the economic class struggle, but also extends to the political and, indeed, ideologi- cal class struggle. This being the case, I will not speak of the concrete problems of the class struggle waged by the international communist movement, its crisis and the eventual solution of that crisis. I am going to talk about something else: the dictatorship of the proletariat. We can say that this theme is on the order of the day of every Communist Party in the world. It is on the order of the day in People’s China, where the Chinese Communist Party insistently stresses the need to understand, respect and apply the dictatorship of the proletariat. It has been on the order of the day in the Soviet Union since 1936, that is to say, ever since Stalin declared officially that the USSR had now left behind the dictatorship of the proletariat

Historical Materialism 23.1 (2015) 152–178