Marxism and Deconstruction Ryan, Michael Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Ryan, Michael. Marxism and Deconstruction: A Critical Articulation. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.68454. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/68454 [ Access provided at 29 Sep 2021 16:43 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. HOPKINS OPEN PUBLISHING ENCORE EDITIONS Michael Ryan Marxism and Deconstruction A Critical Articulation Open access edition supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press Published 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. CC BY-NC-ND ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3206-9 (open access) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3206-4 (open access) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3205-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3205-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-3207-6 (electronic) ISBN-10: 1-4214-3207-2 (electronic) This page supersedes the copyright page included in the original publication of this work. MARXISMAND DECONSTRUCTION MARXISM AND DECONSTRUCTION A Critical Articulation Michael Ryan The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore and London Copyright © 1982 by The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Originally published, 1982 Johns Hopkins Paperbacks edition, 1984 Second printing, 1986 Third printing, 1989 The Johns Hopkins University Press 701 West 40th Street Baltimore, Maryland 21211 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ryan, Michael, 1951- Marxism and deconstruction. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Communism-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Criticism-Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Derrida, Jacques-Addresses, essays, lectures . I. Title. HX73.R9 335.43 81-48185 ISBN 0-8018-3248-9 (pbk .) For Gayatn· In memory of Walter Rodnev (1942-1980) Philosophy has become secularized, and the striking proof thereof is that the philosophical consciousness itself has been pulled into the torrent of struggle .... If the construction and preparation of the future is not our business, then it is the more certain what we do have to consummate-I mean the ruthless criticism of all that exists . I am therefore, not in favor of planting a dogmatic flag; quite the contrary. We should try to help the dogmatists to clarify their ideas. -Karl Marx Articulation is difference .... The relationship ... is one of seriality without paradigm. -Jacques Derrida Contents Abbreviations x1 Preface xm Introduction 1 1 Deconstruction: A Primer, A Critique, The Politics Of 9 2 Marx and Derrida 43 3 Deconstruction and Dialectics 6S 4 The Limits of Capital 82 5 From Derrida to Habermas and Beyond, via Lacan 103 6 The Metaphysics of Everyday Life 117 7 Reason and Counterrevolution 132 8 Marxism after Deconstruction 159 9 Postleninist Marxism-Socialist Feminism and Autonomy 194 Conclusion 213 Notes 223 Index 231 ix Abbreviations AFP Henry Kissinger, American Fore([fn Pohcy (New York, 1977). BF Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, and Hilary Wainwright, Be­ yond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Sociahsm (Lon­ don , 1979). Cap 1 Karl Marx , Capital Volum e One , trans. Ben Fowkes (New York, 1977). Cap 3 Karl Marx, Capital Volume Three, trans. Ernest Untermann (New York, 1977). Grit Jean Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason (London, 1976). CSF Karl Marx , "The Class Struggles in France ," in Surveys from Exile (London, 1975). CT Stanley Hoffmann, Contemporarv Theory in International Relations (Englewood Cliffs, 1960). cw Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow, 1976). DHE American Assembly, Disorders in Higher Education (Englewood Cliffs, 1979). Diss Jacques Derrida, La dissemination ( Paris, 1972 ). Ecrits Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1977). EW Karl Marx, Ear(v Works, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London, 1975 ). FIA Karl Marx, The First International and After, ed. David Fernbach (London, 1974). Gram Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, 1976). Grun Karl Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicholaus (London, 1973). LCW V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (London, 1964). LI Jacques Derrida, "Limited Inc abc," G(vph 2: Johns Hopkins Tex­ tual Studies (Baltimore, 1977). MEW Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Marx-Engels Werke (Berlin, 1962-68). XI x11 ABBREVIATIONS NGC Rainer Nagele, "The Provocation of Lacan," New German Cri­ tique, no. 16 (Winter 1979), pp. 7-29. OLI Paul Hirst, On Law and Ideology (Atlantic Highlands, 1979). PA Pn'orities for Action (New York, 1973). Pos Jacques Derrida, Positions (Paris, 1972). PSE Planning a Socialist Economy, ed. L. Y. Berri (Moscow, 1977). PT Andreas Faludi, Planning Theory (London, 1973). Rev Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848 (London, 1973). SP Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, trans. David Allison (Evanston, 1973). TSV Karl Marx, Theon·es of Surplus Value (Moscow, 1971). VH Stanley Hoffmann, "A View from Home : The Perils of Inco­ herence," Foreign Policy (Elmsford, 1979), pp. 463-91. WD Jacques Derrida, Wn'ting and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chi­ cago, 1977). Preface A "critical articulation" neither makes similarities into identities nor rigorously maintains distinctions. It is more akin to the weaving together of heterogeneous threads into a new product than to the scholarly and disinterested comparison of homo­ geneous masses whose distinction is respected. This book might be called an alloy, rather than a comparative study. The alloying of the two dis­ tinct entities into a new compound requires an account of the materials used, but merely to enable the location of common properties that fa­ cilitate the making of the alloy. Not all deconstruction can be used for this endeavor. Except for the work of such radical critics as Gayatri Spivak 1 and others who use it to analyze institutions, political discourse, and ideology, American decon­ struction is too far removed from the concerns of marxism to be of any value in an articulation of the sort undertaken here. The work of Jacques Derrida, the initiator of the deconstructive critique of metaphysics, is more accessible to this process. Marxisms abound, and Alvin Gouldner argues that there are at least two major schools, the "scientific" and the "critical." 2 Scientific marxism is grounded in the axioms of the Soviet Union's celebrated metaphysics, "dialectical materialism." It interprets the world in one way at all times, and, therefore, it remains closed to new advances in philosophy and critical analysis, such as deconstruction. Because critical marxism is less the designation for a school or a system, and more the provisional tag for a plurality of movements, it can more easily be articulated with decon­ struction. In economic theory, critical marxist movements tend to be charac­ terized by a rejection of the model of authoritarian central state com­ munism. They favor models of socialism which are dehierarchized, egali­ tarian, and democratic. Whereas the Soviet model privileges productive forces (technology, heavy industry, and the like) over productive rela- Xlll XIV PREFACE tions, thus permitting the preservation of capitalist work relations, criti­ cal marxists demand a complete transformation of the form of work and of all social power relations , in the "private " as much as in the "public" sphere. They see capital and patriarchy as equally important adversaries. Historically, patriarchy precedes free enterprise capitalism as a mode of oppression, and in the so-called socialist countries it postdates capitalism as a mode of oppression. Capitalism and patriarchy are inseparable in practice, though distinct in theory. Therefore, a socialism that removes capital while preserving patriarchy remains a form of oppression from the point of view of critical marxism. Critical marxists depart from the leninist tradition in that they call for political organizational forms that are not exclusive, elitist, hierarchical, or disciplinarian. The postrevolutionary "arrangement of things ," to use Marx's phrase, should include the political advances made by the bour­ geoisie (such as democracy and civil rights), just as a socialist economy must necessarily presuppose the technological and economic advances that capitalism produces. Socialism should not destroy all "bourgeois rights" (hypocritical as some of them may be) and return to seventeenth­ century absolutism . Democratic socialism would further the displacement and defusion of power relations, the institution of radical democracy, and the development of forms of self-mana14ement and of self-14overn­ ment. Deconstruction consists of a critique of metaphysics in all its classic and current forms-idealism, transcendental phenomenology, crude materialism, logical positivism, and so forth. The closest approximation of deconstruction on the left is the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin . More recently, the work of Tony Bennett, Ernesto Laclau, Paul Hirst , and others in En14land has reflected aspects of Derrida's work . Derrida published his major works between 1967 and 1975. Al­ though he continues to publish significant