[FallenRaptor]

I've been reading about him in the past 2 weeks, and since it seems a few people here know about him that I would make a thread to discuss his theories.

I find many of his contributions to Marxism to be very interesting, especially his views on Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus, which can be seen as an expansion of Gramsci's cultural hegemony. My main criticism of his thought is that he seems to downplay human agency too much. From my understanding, he believed structures made individuals into unconcious agents in a similar way that animals are unconcious carriers of diseases. I believe such a view resembles deterministic vulgar Marxism and it largely ignores internal structures & processes of individuals and the relationships that individuals have with structures.

[Wellsy]

I am not that sympathetic as I think he plays a confusing if interesting role in understanding Marx. He has to make qualifications to defend his interpretation and it seems like it reflects methods not akin to Marx’s and actively seeks to avoid engaging with Marx’s intellectual heritage.

Really I get the impression that he sounds more like thinkers in the west who though sympathetic to Marxism, kind of butcher him in an analytical way. They simply do not know or sense the intellectual tradition in which Marx operates and developed. And so I but heads with those who most strongly endorse Althusser as the most objective theorist.

Spoiler: show

https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/a/l.htm#althusser-louis

Starting from Marx’s criticism of empiricism, Althusser rejected the positive content of empirical knowledge entirely. Althusser asserts that Essence is not to be found in Appearance, but must be discovered through ’theoretical practice’ - “history features in [Marx’s] Capital as an object of theory, not as a real object, as an ’abstract’ (conceptual) object and not as a real-concrete object". Thus, as in Kant, the ’real’ history lies in a ’beyond’, behind the ’theory of history’, which is the only true object of knowledge. Althusser further rejects the concept of contradiction in Marx and Hegel, which he sees in structuralist terms as “over-determination". Althusser saw the early chapters of Marx’s Capital not as a key, but a barrier to understanding Marx’s view of capitalist society, advising readers to begin Capital with Part II. Althusser thus arrives not at a revision, but at a complete negation of Marx. On Marx is the earliest work in which his criticism of Marx is put forward. His most influential works include For Marx (1965) and Lenin and Philosophy (1969) including his article on “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Marx’s humanism he viewed as a temporary, Feuerbachian phase, surpassed by commitment to the scientific observation of the structure of bourgeois society.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/althusser.htm

As a good structuralist, Althusser can cap off his “proof” of the subjected character of the self-deluded subject with an archetypical sleight of hand of the kind so popular among French structuralists:
“... The whole mystery of this effect lies ... in the ambiguity of the term subject. In the ordinary use of the term, subject in fact means: (1) a free subjectivity, a centre of initiatives, author of and responsible for its actions; (2) a subjected being, who submits to a higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his submission. ... the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall (freely) accept his subjection, ...
But of course the two opposite meanings of the word “subject” have quite different genealogies. Descartes, criticising Aristotle, used the Latin translation of Aristotle’s upokeimenon (hypokeimenon), subjectum, to mean the substance (substantia) to which all attributes adhered, i.e., (for Descartes) the individual self-consciousness and cogito; Kant went on to define this subject as the sovereign individual, the “free subjectivity, a centre of initiatives, author of and responsible for its actions.” This meaning of the word “subject” has continued in use, but exclusively within philosophical discourse and only in fairly recent times has it penetrated a broader audience.
On the other hand, “subject” entered the English language in the 14th century in the sense of someone under the dominion of or owing allegiance to a sovereign power, being subject to its laws, enjoying its protection. At this time, “subjectum” was understood in the Aristotlean sense, prior to Descartes’ transformation of the subject into an active agent within a philosophical discourse. In ordinary usage, “subject” retained this passive meaning, and took on further usages, such as being the subject of a poem or an accusation or being subjected to taxes, and so on.
Rather than an ambiguity, what we have is effectively two different words, two different concepts. The connection between the two meanings of “subject” is historical, not logical. It is nothing more than a structuralist trick to suggest a necessary connection to being a subject (i.e., a self-conscious, knowing author of one’s own actions) and being subjected to a higher authority. The two meaning, while not absolutely incompatible, are opposite in their meaning and have different contexts.
…
Agency

Althusser’s solution to this riddle entails the conception that while he, Althusser, is but a humble subject, nevertheless, as a scientist, he is able to participate in and be mouthpiece or vehicle for science. Science in his conception is not an Ideology, but truth, and as such is a process without a subject; it is subjectless, an objective process. But its truths find their way into print via the pens of humble subjects who should not delude themselves about having made a discovery or having been responsible for creating anything. This despite the claim that science is only possible “from a proletarian class viewpoint, and with the new practice of philosophy that follows from it.” [Althusser 1971]
This leads to the absurd and reactionary position that Althusser must teach his students a scientific point of view, namely that history is a process without a subject, but at the same tell them that the working class can rise only to the level of socialist humanism, an ideology, and encourage his readers to keep science to themselves, and propagate ideology to the workers instead.
…
The question has to be asked though, at what point, coming down from epochal shifts in history, to changes in government, to events in union branches or workplaces to deciding when to have lunch, is there room for free will? Self-evidently, there is some dividing line, but nothing in Althusser makes it possible to work out where such a dividing line could lie. Equally, given their social position, at what point is an agent simply choosing to do what, in any case, they had to do, or what their previous actions had inevitably led them to do, and at what point is the agent’s well-chosen or mistaken action an original factor in the situation not to be understood in any other way than as the result of their intervention?
There may be only one road across the Alps but Hannibal still had to find it.
…
Nevertheless, Althusser raises some real problems. Looked at from a distance, from outside, the impact of individuals on the course of history does appear as nothing more than a bit of a wiggle on the historical trajectory, so to speak. History does appear to unfold according to laws which can be the object if science, law which cannot be altered by the intervention of individual subjects.
…
Althusser’s theory leads to some horrific and counter-intuitive conclusions: that scientific ideas are not suitable for general distribution, that ideology should instead be promoted for general distribution, that the scientist is as much a creature of ideology as anyone else and that he or she is not the creator, but mere bearer of the science she or he produces, that history unfolds as an entirely objective process, with no subjective component at all, or even openings for subjective intervention. That is, history and society is a natural process which science can understand and control, but even science itself develops as a natural process just like its objects.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Article_on_Teleology.pdf

The sociologist Anthony Giddens claimed that the predictability manifested in social life is largely ‘made to happen’ by strategically placed social actors, not in spite of them or ‘behind their backs’. Far from people being driven to do what they do by remote or invisible ‘structural forces’, Giddens showed that “all explanations will involve at least implicit references both to the purposive, reasoning behavior of agents and to its intersection with constraining and enabling features of the social and material contexts” (1984, p. 179). Giddens’ research shows that individuals are generally well aware of the possible consequences of their actions, and are experts in the often lamentable situations in which they find themselves.
…
Any given social arrangement has an inherent ‘logic’ which constrain the actions of all the particular actors; no-one ‘forces’ any actor to act in a certain way (indeed they would not be actors at all if they were forced), but the social arrangements constrain them in what can be called ‘logical necessity’: “You don’t have to do X, but look at your options. You’d be well advised to do X.” But it does not stop there; people endeavor to change arrangements which do not suit them. Responses to institutional arrangements are a kind of practical critique of the concept on which the institution was based. Institutional arrangements will be changed in response to such critique and the changes decided upon by rational deliberations, however imperfect, will respond to the practical critique explicitly in the form of thinking and argument.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/pilling3.htm

In the light of the distinction between the ‘empirical’ and ‘empiricism’ let us pause to consider the case of Althusser. One aspect of Althusser’s work is that he is guilty of transforming Marx’s many statements on the inadequacy of empiricism to mean that the empirical must be rejected entirely as purely ideological. Reading Marx through the distorting lens of structuralism, Althusser wants to pretend that Marxism is antiempiricist in the sense that there is a reality lying beyond and entirely separated from the immediate appearances of the world. On this view – one quite at variance with Marx – the essence of phenomena inhabits a realm divorced completely from the manner in which these, the phenomena, were actually historically formed, from the path along which they actually appeared. And this sphere – the essence of phenomena – is to be discovered through ‘theoretical practice’ – that is, in a process of thought separated entirely from historical practice. And because he separates out the ‘essence’ from the path by which that essence actually takes on the form of its appearance, he must separate out logic form history. Thus we find in Reading Capital:
Knowledge working on its object ... does not work on the real object but on the peculiar raw material which constitutes in the strict sense of the term, its ‘object’ (of knowledge) and which, even in the most rudimentary forms of knowledge is distinct from the real object. For that raw material is ever-already, in the strong sense Marx gives it in Capital, raw material, i.e. matter already elaborated and transformed, precisely by the imposition of the complex (sensuous-technical-ideological structure) which constitutes it as an object of knowledge, however crude, which constitutes it as the object it will transform, whose forms it will change in the course of its development process in order to produce knowledge and which are constantly transformed but will always apply to its object, in the sense of the object of knowledge. (Althusser and Balibar 1970, p. 43).
Stripped of the pomposity which characterises the Althusserian style, what does this passage mean if not that there is supposedly a rigid distinction to be drawn between reality and the way in which we come to perceive that reality? And from this must inexorably follow an attack upon Marx’s insistence on the historical nature of all the categories evolved in the study of society. We note in passing that Althusser tries to foist this view mainly on to Engels, rather than Marx. It was in fact a position held by them both.
This metaphysical separation of ‘dialectics’ and ‘history’ runs throughout Althusser’s work. Another example of it will have to suffice. Attacking those who have conceived Capital as a historical work, Althusser says:
They did not see that is presumably until Althusser fell from the skies that history features in Capital as an object of theory, not as a real object, as an ‘abstract’ (conceptual) object and not as a real-concrete object; and that the chapters in which Marx applies the first stages of a historical treatment either to the struggles to shorten the working day or to primitive capitalist accumulation refer to the theory of history as their principle, to the construction of the concept of history and of its ‘developed form’, of which the economic theory of the capitalist mode of production constitutes one determinate ‘region’. (Althusser and Balibar, 1970, p. 117)
Shorn of its verbiage, what does this amount to if not the old ideological prejudice that theory precedes practice? Practice is to be degraded to the level where it merely illustrates theory. The abstract is to be sundered entirely from the concrete, this abstract to be arrived at by a process metaphysically standing apart from the process of reality. Only when science has developed can it then be applied to history. Hence the concern of this school to find adequate concepts which alone will allow us to understand the movement of reality. Once more Althusser, if he will pardon the expression ‘inverts’ the real path by which knowledge grows. Marx’s categories in Capital arose through a long process in which all the perceived developments and changes within capitalism were posited on to all the previous attempts – inside and outside the working class movement – to grasp the real nature and significance of this new mode of production. Only in this process was political economy ‘tested out’ and its inadequacies exposed. For instance, Marx’s ability to grasp the real nature of surplus value would have been impossible without the discovery of the category ‘labour power’. Only with this discovery was Marx able to resolve a number of the theoretical problems which had beset political economy. But, and it is a vital ‘but’, such a ‘discovery’ by Marx was possible only because the category labour-power was actually being brought into being by the development if capital, brought into being in the shape of the modern working class, a class selling this commodity, labour-power, as the basis for its existence.
In short, the Althusser position is one totally incompatible with that of Marx. The way man perceives reality is not purely ideological, not something entirely separated from reality, but always the starting point for knowledge, for the elaboration of concepts. Althusser’s position far from being ‘rigorous’ in fact leads to a position where the individual can believe or do anything in practice, because for him theory constitutes an autonomous sphere. Althusser and his followers have in effect merely been engaged in the very old and entirely petty dispute as to whether truth is located in the immediately sensed or in the essence of things. Hegel (followed by Marx) put an end to this squabble by insisting that it was not a question of ‘or’ but of ‘and’. Truth was a process which involved both the immediate and the mediated – truth was not a body of dogma (to be discovered by the practitioners of Theoretical Practice) but a process, a process which moved always from appearance to essence. Speaking specifically of Marx’s analysis of the commodity, Lenin shows how much richer is his position as against the arid structuralism of Althusser. ‘A double analysis, deductive and inductive – logical and historical (forms of value). Testing by the facts or by practice respectively, [author’s emphasis] is to be found here in each step of the analysis’.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/activity/index.htm

In pedagogy, there is a troubling and (when you think about it) strange problem that is usually described as the problem of “the practical application of knowledge to life.” And it is in fact true that the graduate from school (whether high school or college) finds himself in the quandary of not knowing how to “apply” knowledge to any problem that arises outside the walls of school.
This seems to imply that human abilities should include the special ability of somehow “correlating” knowledge with its object, i.e. with reality as given in contemplation. This means that there should be a special kind of activity of correlating knowledge and its object, where “knowledge” and “object” are thought of as two different “things” distinct from the person himself. One of these things is knowledge as contained in general formulas, instructions, and propositions, and the other thing is the unstructured chaos of phenomena as given in perception. If this were so, then we could clearly try to formulate rules for making this correlation, and also to enumerate and classify typical errors so that we could warn ahead of time how to avoid them. In instructional theory, one often tries to solve the problem of knowing “how to apply knowledge to life” by creating just this kind of system of rules and warnings. But the result is that the system of rules and warnings becomes so cumbersome that it starts to impede rather than help things, becoming an additional source of errors and failures.
Thus, there is every reason to believe that the very problem we are trying to solve arises only because the “knowledge” has been given to the person in an inadequate form; or, to put it more crudely, it is not real knowledge, but only some substitute…
In fact, knowledge in the precise sense of the word is always knowledge of an object. Of a particular object, for it is impossible to know “in general,” without knowing a particular system of phenomena, whether these are chemical, psychological, or some other phenomena.
But, after all, in this case the very phrase about the difficulties of “applying” knowledge to an object sounds rather absurd. To know an object, and to “apply” this knowledge – knowledge of the object – to the object? At best, this must be only an imprecise, confusing way of expressing some other, hidden situation.
But this situation is rather typical.
And this situation is possible only under particular circumstances – when the person has mastered not knowledge of an object but knowledge of something else instead. And this “other thing” can only be a system of phrases about an object, learned either irrespective of the latter or in only an imaginary, tenuous, and easily broken connection to it. A system of words, terms, symbols, signs, and their stable combinations, as formed and legitimized in everyday life – “statements” and “systems of statements.” Language, in particular, the “language of science” with its supply of words and its syntactic organization and “structure.” In other words, the object, as represented in available language, as an already verbalized object.
Yes, if “knowledge” is always identified with verbally organized consciousness, then the problem will in fact be as described above – as the special problem of “correlating” knowledge and object. But when the question is posed like this, the very problem of the “application” of knowledge to the real world is easily replaced by the problem of the “correct” verbalization of unverbalized material. The verbal “object” then turns into a synonym for the chaos of totally unorganized “sense data” – into a synonym only for what I do not know about the object.

[Potemkin]

Awesome necropost, @Wellsy. This thread had been dead almost as long as Althusser himself.

[Wellsy]

Awesome necropost, @Wellsy. This thread had been dead almost as long as Althusser himself.

Yeah has been kind of a waste as its not like theres many fans of Althusser to bounce arguments with.

I tried to lay bait but I’ll just read stuff about Marx instead, more productive.

[Potemkin]

Yeah has been kind of a waste as its not like theres many fans of Althusser to bounce arguments with.

I tried to lay bait but I’ll just read stuff about Marx instead, more productive.

I distinctly remember discussing Althusser a few years back, @Wellsy (before your time, I think). Do a search on ‘Althusser’ on PoFo and see what comes up. You just made the mistake of trying to revive a 14 year old thread which had been stillborn. You’re in a hole, but keep digging anyway my friend….

[Wellsy]

I distinctly remember discussing Althusser a few years back, @Wellsy (before your time, I think). Do a search on ‘Althusser’ on PoFo and see what comes up. You just made the mistake of trying to revive a 14 year old thread which had been stillborn. You’re in a hole, but keep digging anyway my friend….

I have a vague recollection of a post or two of yours which I can’t find amidst my searching now.

But it might have been in discussion with Vera Politca about how Althusser’s anti-humanism and scientism was an effort to resist the deformation of Marxism into a kind of liberal abstract humanism.

I perhaps push a little hard against Althusser in part as I imagine myself sympathetic to some humanist readings of Marx amidst the need to emphasize his methodology as a theory of knowledge and results as scientific.

So it may be a case if the times that he pushed against a specific tendency of the times just as Lenin had to fight it out with idealism in Machism.

I personally dislike the extreme emphasis on the objective and indifference to the subjective though think the subjective can be rationally/scientifically explained in its development. I see in a school of thought through Lev Vygotsky (Cultural Historical Activity Theory/CHAT) a trend which is increasingly able to overcome a individual vs structure duality and situate individual actors within activities and give meaning to their actions at both the individual level and macro level.

This tendency puts me at odds with a lot of other Marxists who have perhaps read a few of Marx’s economic texts and a couple Soviet thinkers. They can sometimes come off crude and dogmatic.
I once found myself being hounded in discussion of Ilyenkov’s concept of ideality in which things like value are reflection of human relations and activity. But the word ideal was too much and it was framed as Hegelian objective idealism, but this was in defense of Marx’s characterization of value as being a kind of philosophically material quality, as existing outside consciousness and not dependent on an individuals consciousness.


Instead of Althusser, I am instead looking at summaries of classical political economy through Anwar Shaikh lectures and of Marx’s theoretical development https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygodsky/1965/discovery.htm

[Potemkin]

I have a vague recollection of a post or two of yours which I can’t find amidst my searching now.

But it might have been in discussion with Vera Politca about how Althusser’s anti-humanism and scientism was an effort to resist the deformation of Marxism into a kind of liberal abstract humanism.

I perhaps push a little hard against Althusser in part as I imagine myself sympathetic to some humanist readings of Marx amidst the need to emphasize his methodology as a theory of knowledge and results as scientific.

So it may be a case if the times that he pushed against a specific tendency of the times just as Lenin had to fight it out with idealism in Machism.

I personally dislike the extreme emphasis on the objective and indifference to the subjective though think the subjective can be rationally/scientifically explained in its development. I see in a school of thought through Lev Vygotsky (Cultural Historical Activity Theory/CHAT) a trend which is increasingly able to overcome a individual vs structure duality and situate individual actors within activities and give meaning to their actions at both the individual level and macro level.

This tendency puts me at odds with a lot of other Marxists who have perhaps read a few of Marx’s economic texts and a couple Soviet thinkers. They can sometimes come of crude and dogmatic.


Instead of Althusser, I am instead looking at summaries of classical political economy through Anwar Shaikh lectures and of Marx’s theoretical development https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygodsky/1965/discovery.htm

Soviet-era “diamat” has had a very bad effect, @Wellsy. It was a compulsory subject in Soviet education, was notoriously dull and boring, and was essentially a crude, vulgarised version of Marxist dialectical materialism, shorn of its cultural, philosophical and historical context (ironically enough). But I guess this was inevitable - make anything into a mass movement, and it inevitably becomes vulgarised. It happened to Christianity, it happened to Darwinism, and it happened to Marxism. But there’s really no excuse for Marxists in the West to parrot Soviet-era diamat slogans, as though that represented the pinnacle of Marxist thought. It didn’t then, and it doesn’t now.

[Wellsy]

Soviet-era “diamat” has had a very bad effect, @Wellsy. It was a compulsory subject in Soviet education, was notoriously dull and boring, and was essentially a crude, vulgarised version of Marxist dialectical materialism, shorn of its cultural, philosophical and historical context (ironically enough). But I guess this was inevitable - make anything into a mass movement, and it inevitably becomes vulgarised. It happened to Christianity, it happened to Darwinism, and it happened to Marxism. But there’s really no excuse for Marxists in the West to parrot Soviet-era diamat slogans, as though that represented the pinnacle of Marxist thought. It didn’t then, and it doesn’t now.

Why do you think this vulgarization occurs?
The need to dumb things down for mass consumption and make it easy to read blips rather than tackle the problems in which the concepts arise? Or is it the case that things are simplified in part because the mass of people aren't provided with the adequate means of engaging with such material.
For example, to enjoy certain types of art, whether it's reading a long novel, or listening to entire symphonies require not only the time but adequate support in cultivation a sense to appreciate such art. It can not be consumed too easily, it requires one's sense to have been cultivated in some way.

I vaguely remember quoting a Russian philosopher who has some renown in his work under and interpretation of Evald Ilyenkov. He summarized that the education of a society on the whole cannot extend to far beyond the needs and division of labor in an economy. Obviously one can be educated and a total idiot or lack a quality education but still be one who thinks, but the needs of a society does seem a limiter on the quality of education and thus understanding a population develops.
I would love to endlessly research somethings, even my distractions into Marxism are sometimes at the cost of being present in my day to day responsibilities to my family which I can't neglect. And that's just for reading let alone experiencing things, I am limited by what means there are to support my family and I would say relative to the population of my small town, I am incredibly well off. So whatever inclinations I might have are stunted by practical things, endless leisurely pursuits can only be afforded to a particular demographic.

[Potemkin]

Why do you think this vulgarization occurs?
The need to dumb things down for mass consumption and make it easy to read blips rather than tackle the problems in which the concepts arise? Or is it the case that things are simplified in part because the mass of people aren't provided with the adequate means of engaging with such material.
For example, to enjoy certain types of art, whether it's reading a long novel, or listening to entire symphonies require not only the time but adequate support in cultivation a sense to appreciate such art. It can not be consumed too easily, it requires one's sense to have been cultivated in some way.

I vaguely remember quoting a Russian philosopher who has some renown in his work under and interpretation of Evald Ilyenkov. He summarized that the education of a society on the whole cannot extend to far beyond the needs and division of labor in an economy. Obviously one can be educated and a total idiot or lack a quality education but still be one who thinks, but the needs of a society does seem a limiter on the quality of education and thus understanding a population develops.
I would love to endlessly research somethings, even my distractions into Marxism are sometimes at the cost of being present in my day to day responsibilities to my family which I can't neglect. And that's just for reading let alone experiencing things, I am limited by what means there are to support my family and I would say relative to the population of my small town, I am incredibly well off. So whatever inclinations I might have are stunted by practical things, endless leisurely pursuits can only be afforded to a particular demographic.

Precisely. Most people are too busy trying to survive and support a family to devote the time and the brain power to becoming cultured. Not many people can afford to “cultivate one’s garden”, as Voltaire put it. Yet this is the ultimate purpose of human life - to cultivate one’s own sensibilities and to help oneself and others achieve self-actualisation through friendships and social interactions. This has been understood since the time of the ancient Greeks, and was reiterated by Marx. Yet the struggle for material survival - for mere physical existence - still occupies most of the time of most of the human race. And this after more than five millennia of ‘civilisation’. We’re clearly doing something wrong.

But yeah, Ilyenkov was spot on. The purpose of education is not to educate people, but to reproduce the class hierarchy from one generation to the next. British society is a lot more blatant about this than American or Australian society, since our education system is divided into low-quality state schools and high-quality private schools, based not on the intelligence or capacity for education of the pupils, but simply on the parents’ ability to pay. This leads to a lot of wastage - intelligent working-class pupils are given sub-standard educations, while the best educations that money can buy are lavished on high-born imbeciles. Limited by “the needs and division of labour in an economy” indeed.

[Rich]

since our education system is divided into low-quality state schools and high-quality private schools, based not on the intelligence or capacity for education of the pupils, but simply on the parents’ ability to pay.

I went to a high quality state school which as far as I'm aware is still a high quality state school. My School was mostly what you would call Middle Class, but there was a good minority of "Working Class" pupils. We held Public School kids in contempt. (Its a bit confusing for foreigners but both "public" and "private" schools in Britain are non state.) I don't recall anyone being looked down upon for having poor parents.

Bring back the Grammar schools! The far left have universally opposed Grammar Schools. While the likes of Dianne Abbott send their children to private school. Abbott and Corbyn might be on the right wing of the far left, but I still consider it reasonable to categorise them as such.