The Politics of Louis Althusser: Culty with Nearly Every Stroke of His Pen
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The politics of Louis Althusser: culty with nearly every stroke of his pen. His latest book Introduction [Essays in Self-Criticism, New Left Books, London, Despite the fact that Louis Althusser is a prominent 1976; translation, Preface, and Introduction by representative of a distinct political trend in the Grahame Lock] is Althusser's attempt to clean up his French Communist Party, his writings have been de- act, but his attempt to extricate himself from one set bated outside France as though they were politically of problems is leading him into fresh collisions with unimportant — the province of academic philosophers Marx and Lenin. alone. We do not propose to follow this practice. If There are some superficial parallels between the Althusser's work were purely of consequence to the careers of Georg Lukacs and Louis Althusser. Lukacs, editors of Telos, Radical America, Theoretical Review, the Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic, and the more difficult contributors to New Left was a creative and innovative thinker who, after daring Review and Marxism Today, they would not interest to test the outer limits of thought in the Communist us. movement under Stalin, was frequently forced to Eurocommunism is Althusser's habitat — that jum- retreat with a pitiful "self-criticism" which barely ble of massive but unorthodox Communist Parties preserved his party membership, and perhaps his life, who defy the Soviet Union, discard proletarian dic- from the wrath of the monolith. Althusser, the eccentric tatorship as an anachronism, drop Leninism from their vocabularies, join bourgeois governments, and, philosopher in the French Communist Party who has in Italy, hunt down revolutionaries and jail them. invented a whole new theoretical approach to From within the French CP Althusser criticizes much Marxism, has now begun his retreat. of this, yet he not only has stayed in, but frequently Both Lukacs and Althusser are defenders of Marxist has beaten theoretical retreats through self-criticism "orthodoxy" during periods when their parties disdain which, so far at least, has kept his party membership it. Perhaps these similarities explain why the ideas of intact. these two men seem destined to a common fate ~ the In this way Althusser provides what seems in some growth of a large, vocal, and aggressive following respects to be a defense of Marxist orthodoxy — a among young intellectuals in the academic world; left critique of the Euroeommunist mainstream. some measure of recognition by the bourgeois Marxist militants who cannot stomach .the giant de- intelligentsia; and a much smaller following among partures of Georges Marchais, or Enrico Berlinguer, party rank-and-filers. or Santiago Carrillo are given a theoretical justifica- But there the similarities end. Lukacs was defending tion for joining or staying in the Communist Parties. the orthodoxy of revolutionary creativity within the This is not an unimportant task. Were every militant confines of a Stalinist straitjacket. Both the creativity who read and agreed with Marx, and look note of and the orthodoxy of Althusser's thought are purely the CPs' departure from his teachings, to leave the formal — hypermodern Marxism whose complexities CPs as those parties depart from Marxism, their col- and terminological novelty inspire otherwise intelligent lapse would be imminent. people to participate in the dullest enterprise while But some aspects of Marxist orthodoxy are stub- defending the terms, but not the ideas, that once taught bornly incompatible with even the most radical vari- millions how to recognize social revolution when they ant of Eurocommunism. Here is where Althusser's saw it. genius comes into its own. His Marxism permits one Despite the new book's title, Althusser exhibits no to discard Marx selectively, using an elaborate theo- humility in his "self-criticism." This is a truculent book retical construct and an apparent philosophical rigor in which Althusser bullies his opponents even as he supposedly methodologically loyal to Marx. If Al- retreats from most of the theoretical ground on which thusser can withstand attack here, the rest of his he made his name. system, and its political consequences, may be safe. In the past, for example, Althusser distinguished The Urgent Tasks symposium therefore examines himself with his claim that theory is a form of practice. both Althusser's politics and the theoretical under- "Theoretical practice" was reified into the defiant slogan pinnings. of the Althusserian camp, and his British followers took Followers of Althusser's writings sooner or later that as the title for their political journal. Now that come to an almost inescapable conclusion: Althusser Althusser confesses that his most original assertion was may be the first person who became a Marxist-Lenin- in error (it is "dangerous," he says, and "must be done ist philosopher before becoming thoroughly familiar away with"), his loyal adherents are left holding the with the teachings of Marx and Lenin. bag. But if Grahame Lock's Introduction is any guide, It is difficult to imagine, otherwise, how he could they are shamelessly committed to their man and have gotten himself into so much theoretical diffi- scarcely disturbed by such trifles. 8 a symposium All this confirms that something more (or maybe deviation." (He rejects the term "Stalinism" because less) than "philosophy" is involved here. It is difficult it is a bourgeois or Trotskyist label which "explains to suppose that pillars of basic doctrine can be aban- nothing.") doned at will, but if the changes wrought are actually Of course, he adds, it is wrong not to recognize conducted at a lower theoretical altitude than the Stalin's "historical merits": "He understood that it Althusserians pretend, they can readily be understood was necessary to abandon the miraculous idea of an as attempts to shore up a dubious possessory title to imminent 'world revolution' and to undertake instead certain political turf. the 'construction of socialism' in one country." Stalin Althusser has played a cat-and-mouse game with taught millions of Communists "that there existed his critics for nearly a decade. An essay would appear, Principles of Leninism." But there were drawbacks to and his critics would respond. He would then write, Stalin too, among them, his "humanism." "They don't understand," and would reveal the secret Lock makes some of this concrete: "The Polish of what he was supposedly driving at in the first events [the mass strikes of 1970] demonstrate some- place. (When he bothered to answer at all, that is.) thing important, too. The workers' protest itself was The current book continues Althusser's intellectual not — contrary to a common opinion — directed unscrupulousness masquerading as scholarship by in- against 'Stalinism': rather the opposite." (They were cluding a lengthy bibliography of his critics, a dozen for Stalinism??!!) "It is therefore impossible to paint or so of whom get passing mention in Lock's Intro- the Stalin period in wholly black or white terms, and duction, but only one — British Communist John it is equally impossible to pretend that its faults can Lewis — is actually debated by Althusser. be eliminated simply by 'democratizing' or 'liberal- Sometimes the ludicrousness of Althusser's re- izing' the political structures (for the sake of 'liberty') sponses to his critics is astonishing. For years his and 'reforming' the economy (for the sake of 'pro- philosophy has been called "structuralism," in keep- ductivity'). The effects of Stalin's humanism and ing with its similarities to that of other writers who economism cannot be rectified by a more consistent have so named their approach. Now Althusser writes, humanism and a more consistent economism." the problems in my theory didn't come from struc- These lines depart sufficiently from the high road turalism, but from an affinity for Spinoza! — but of "philosophy" to the low road of politics that one answers to the substance of the criticisms still don't naturally is led to the search for a motive other than appear, despite the fact that he knows the debate that of academic excellence and intellectual devotion. isn't about political taxonomy. It is not hard to find. Althusser himself admits he Lock writes that the purpose of his lengthy Intro- wasn't always so courageous: duction is to allow readers to "get an idea of what "Before the Twentieth Congress [of the Soviet kind of politics lie behind Althusser's 'philosophy'." In itself, that ought to be taken as a confession of Communist Party in 1956] it was actually not possi- bankruptcy. If Althusser's previous four books ble for a Communist philosopher, certainly in France, haven't managed to convey his politics somehow, to publish texts which would be (at least to some ex- then the claims he made as to the political character tent) relevant to politics, which would be something of his theoretical work were clearly bogus even before other than a pragmatist commentary on consecrated his "self-criticism." Even so, it is interesting that formulae." But the torrent of criticism that followed Lock, with Althusser's approval, can write that his the Twentieth Congress attacked "Stalin's errors" politics lie behind his philosophy, rather than the from the right — "there inevitably followed what we other way around. (It seems likely that had a critic must call an unleashing of bourgeois ideological and been the first to pose this relationship between Al- philosophical themes within the Communist Parties thusser's politics and theory, she or he would have themselves." been roundly denounced by the defenders of the The ferment that erupted in the Communist Parties faith.) did in fact become part of the general right-wing drift Althusser insists on your respect. Even if you as those parties sought to increase their electoral don't agree with him, he demands that you admire strength and trade union power in Western Europe his political courage.