Making History – Alex Callinicos

MAKING HISTORY HISTORICAL MATERIALISM BOOK SERIES Editorial board PAUL BLACKLEDGE, London - SEBASTIAN BUDGEN, London JIM KINCAID, Leeds - STATHIS KOUVELAKIS, Paris MARCEL VAN DER LINDEN, Amsterdam - CHINA MIÉVILLE, London WARREN MONTAG, Los Angeles - PAUL REYNOLDS, Lancashire TONY SMITH, Ames (IA) MAKING HISTORY Agency, Structure, and Change in Social Theory BY ALEX CALLINICOS BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2004 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Callinicos, Alex. Making history : agency, structure, and change in social theory / Alex Callinicos – 2nd ed. p. cm. — (Historical materialism book series, ISSN 1570-1522 ; 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-13627-4 (alk. paper) 1. Agent (Philosophy) 2. Act (Philosophy) 3. Structuralism. 4. Historical materialism. 5. Revolutions—Philosophy. 6. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. I. Title. II. Series. BD450.C23 2004 128’.4—dc22 2004045143 second revised edition ISSN 1570-1522 ISBN 90 04 13827 4 © Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS To John and Aelda Callinicos This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ............................................................................................................ ix Introduction to the Second Edition ............................................................ xiii Introduction .................................................................................................... xlv Chapter 1 Subjects and Agents ................................................................ 1 1.1 Three concepts of agency ................................................................ 1 1.2 The orthodox conception of agents .............................................. 5 1.3 Human nature: the need for a philosophical anthropology .................................................................................... 17 1.4 Human nature: morality, justice and virtue ................................ 25 1.5 Practical reason and social structures .......................................... 33 Chapter 2 Structure and Action .............................................................. 38 2.1 The concept of social structure ...................................................... 38 2.2 The basic concepts of historical materialism .............................. 40 2.3 Orthodox historical materialism .................................................... 54 2.4 Rational-choice marxism ................................................................ 69 2.5 Structural capacities and human action ...................................... 85 2.6 What’s left of historical materialism? .......................................... 102 Chapter 3 Reasons and Interests .............................................................. 107 3.1 Expressivism and the hermeneutic tradition .............................. 107 3.2 Interpretation and social theory .................................................... 111 3.3 Charity, truth and community ...................................................... 119 3.4 The utilitarian theory of action ...................................................... 129 3.5 Interests and powers ........................................................................ 139 viii • Contents Chapter 4 Ideology and Power ................................................................ 152 4.1 Collective agents .............................................................................. 152 4.2 Falsehood and ideology, I .............................................................. 156 4.3 Falsehood and ideology, II .............................................................. 168 4.4 Nation, state and military power .................................................. 179 4.5 A note on base and superstructure .............................................. 199 Chapter 5 Tradition and Revolution ...................................................... 206 5.1 Revolution as redemption: Benjamin and Sartre ........................ 206 5.2. Marxism and the proletariat .......................................................... 213 5.3 The rationality of revolution .......................................................... 225 5.4 Revolution and repetition .............................................................. 239 5.5 The tradition of the oppressed ...................................................... 254 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 273 Index ................................................................................................................ 279 Preface (1987) Individuals are dealt with here only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, the bearers of particular class-relations and interests. Karl Marx, Capital Everyone has their own good reasons. Jean Renoir, La Règle du jeu The two sentences quoted above define the scope of this book. The first is Marx at his most austerely structural, concerned with analysing the objective relationships in which human beings find themselves, rigorously abstracting from individuals’ perspectives and purposes. The second comes from a film, one of whose triumphs lies in the sympathetic reconstruction of the motives and interests of a diverse and conflicting group of people. Although it sums up the approach of one of the century’s supreme artists, Renoir’s remark could also be taken to epitomise the tradition in social theory most strongly opposed to Marx’s (Max Weber was its greatest exponent) which set itself the task, not of uncovering structures, but of understanding persons. The book seeks to establish the extent to which the two perspectives, of structural explanation and intentional understanding, are compatible with one another. My aim has not been to blur real differences, setting in their place a shallow syncretism, but it seems to me that no worthwhile social theory can do without variants of x • Preface both perspectives. This is so especially for Marxism, which stakes its claim on human beings’ capacity to sweep away millennia of exploitation and oppression. I leave it to the reader to decide how successful my attempted reconciliation has been. It remains only to acknowledge some debts. The past decade has been a rich one for social theory in the English-speaking world. I am grateful to those, such as Jerry Cohen and Anthony Giddens, who have been willing to stick their necks out and offer grand theories, providing others, such as myself, with the less creative and easier work of criticising what they have come up with. The stimulus they have provided will be obvious in what follows. There are other, more personal debts. David Held has been a model editor – patient, sympathetic and tough. Mike Rosen made very helpful comments on a version of the first three chapters. Chris Harman read the whole manuscript, his detailed and stimulating notes on which I have repaid with the grossest ingratitude by inserting criticisms of his own views in the final text. Parts of draft chapters were presented as papers to the Political Theory Workshop at the University of York. I would like to thank those present for their comments. I am also grateful to the members of the Philosophy Department at York, during a very happy year in which I wrote this book. There are two final debts. It was thanks to Joanna Seddon that I observed the historian’s almost alchemical gift of transmuting old records in archives into the struggles and passions of the once-living human beings of whom these documents are the traces. But it was from my father and mother that I learned to value history and to see its connection with liberty. I am therefore dedicating Making History to them. Abbreviations CW K. Marx and F. Engels. Collected Works (50 vols published or in preparation, London, 1975–) IS International Socialism JP Journal of Philosophy KMTH G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History – A Defence (Oxford, 1978) NLR New Left Review P & P Past and Present This page intentionally left blank Introduction to the Second Edition 1. Context Making History was first published in 1987. Certainly its tone and perhaps also its substantive preoccupations may seem to belong to a world that is irretrievably lost. There are, I think, two reasons for this. The first has to do with the political context. I wrote the book in the spring and summer of 1986, in the immediate aftermath of the great British miners’ strike of 1984–5. (Indeed, Making History was conceived and much of the work for it done before the strike, but its writing delayed, principally by my involvement in covering the strike for six months as a journalist at Socialist Worker and my co-authoring a book about the miners’ struggle.)1 The strike and its defeat by the Thatcher government was an event of global resonance, both symbolically and practically. It marked the end of a particular kind of workers’ movement and the apparent triumph of a neo-liberal

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