The Immanent Utopia: From Marxism on the State to the State of Marxism by Axel Van den Berg

Author:Axel Van den Berg [Berg, Axel Van den]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Political Science, General, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781351303705
Google: ZCNHDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 38641026
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

Althusser’s “Orrery”

For32 all the reservations expressed by fellow Marxists about Althusserian structuralism, few would have dared to deny its “indubitable rigour and theoretical sophistication” (Laclau 1975, 87). It is still billed as “a remarkably sophisticated and stimulating interpretation of Marxism” (Craib 1984, 124). Many have praised Althusser and Poulantzas for finally casting off the Marxist propensity toward simplistic reductionism by emphasizing the complex interactions between the base and superstructures (see, e.g., Anderson 1980, 59–79; Caplan 1977, 85-86; Geras 1977, 258–62; McNall 1983, 477; Mann 1973, 1618). In particular the idea that the capitalist state promotes the interests of the dominant classes while maintaining a degree of “relative autonomy” from these classes has been an appealing one, even for some explicit critics of Poulantzas (see, e.g., Hol-loway and Picciotto 1977, 1978, 3–10; Lindsey 1980; Miliband 1973, 85; 1977, 66–90; Weiner 1980, 7–8). But Althusserian-ism’s heyday already seems to have passed. Its decline has been as stunningly rapid as its meteoric rise to prominence. Now that a growing number of critics have exposed its splendid vacuity, adding yet another extensive critique would be like flogging a dead horse (see note 34, this chapter). Rather, in the brief remarks that follow I merely wish to establish that the only possible merit of this approach is that it may have helped persuade orthodox Marxists such as Poulantzas of the legitimacy of considering politics as a realm with some degree of autonomy from the economic “base.” Thus, Poulantzas’s theory will have to be judged on its own and cannot, after my criticisms of it below, be rescued by appeals to its “scientific” Althusserian origins.

To put it bluntly, Althusser’s “science of the history of social formations” turns out, on closer inspection, to have none of the rigor, specificity, or originality he claims for it. His notion of people being the mere “bearers” of roles imposed upon them by the “structures” is, as DiTomaso has convincingly shown (1982; cf. Pedraza-Bailey 1982), virtually indistinguishable from the structural functionalism of Talcott Parsons, including its basic flaw of “sociological reductionism.” In addition, the key concepts of Althusser’s structuralism, and the relations between them, remain so fundamentally ill defined, that his arguments—if they can be called that—boil down to little more than endlessly repeated, obscurely formulated platitudes of the most embarrassing kind.

Consider, first, Althusser’s conception of various social activities (political, ideological, economic, theoretical) as formally similar “practices” in the sense that they can be said to involve processes of transformation by specific combinations of analogous “elements” (“raw materials,” “agents,” “means,” and “procedures” of “production”), although they are differently structured and different in nature for each distinct “practice.” Now, the utility of such a vaguely plausible-sounding metaphor depends, of course, on whether it provides any new insights into the substantive similarities, differences, and relations between the social activities so described. As it is, the notion of structured “practices” means little more than “the way things are done,” which is claimed to have some sort of theoretical primacy over the people who do them.

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