Future for Marxism_ _ Althusser, the Analy - Levine, Andrew(Author).pdf

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A Future for Marxism?
Althusser, the Analytical Turn and
the Revival of Socialist Theory
Andrew Levine
Pluto
LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA
P
Press
First published 2003 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 22883 Quicksilver Drive,
Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Andrew Levine 2003
The right of Andrew Levine to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library
ISBN 0 7453 1988 2 hardback
ISBN 0 7453 1987 4 paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Applied for
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Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth EX10 9QG
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Printed in the European Union by
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Contents
Preface
Part I
Introduction to Part I
1. After the Revolution
2. The Last Left
Conclusion to Part I
Part II
Introduction to Part II: Historicist Marxism
3. Althusser and Philosophy
4. The Break
5. The Analytical Turn
6. The Legacy
Conclusion: A Future for Marxism?
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
vi
3
14
35
59
65
74
91
122
146
167
172
185
187
Preface
Does Marxism have a future? It seems quixotic even to ask this
question at a time when it hardly has a present. Everyone these days
knows that Marxism is finished; that whatever was right in Marx’s
thinking was long ago assimilated into the mainstream intellectual
culture, and that everything else has been proven wrong beyond a
reasonable doubt. Marxism’s demise was precipitous. But, by all
accounts, it was decisive and irreversible. Therefore, Marx and the
ism
identified with his name are of historical interest only. Anyone
who thinks otherwise is blind to the obvious. What follows here
challenges this consensus view.
It is instructive to recall that, not long ago, the prevailing wisdom
was very different. Well into the 1980s, Marxism was endorsed by
some and reviled by others. But no one doubted that it would remain
part of the intellectual and political landscape for an indefinite
period. There were many ‘crises’ of Marxism in those days. But its
disappearance, on their account, was out of the question. In some
quarters, it even seemed that Marxism was being reborn. In addition,
a kind of Marxism was still an official ideology in the Soviet Union
and China and in their respective spheres of influence. Almost until
the moment communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, no one was
so prescient as to think that that political reality would change
anytime soon. Nor did anyone quite foresee how thoroughly
communism would lapse, in substance if not in form, in China. The
official Marxism of the communist countries had been an embar-
rassment to self-identified Marxists in the West for decades before
communism’s fall. Official Marxism had few defenders, even –
indeed, especially – in the lands where it held sway. Still, almost no
one questioned the use of the term to designate even that debased
form of the genre. As a theoretical and political tradition, Marxism
had existed for more than a hundred years. It was, according to the
common sense of the time, a mansion with many chambers.
Everyone assumed that there was enough of a family resemblance
among its varieties, including its Soviet and Chinese versions, to
justify calling them all by the same name; and to warrant distin-
guishing Marxism from rival systems of theory and practice. In this
vi
Preface
vii
respect, it resembled Christianity. Like the very different branches
of that religion, the various Marxisms, for all their diversity, were
joined by a common history and, it was thought, by deeper doctrinal
affinities as well.
Nowadays, the idea that all self-described Marxisms share a
common core seems less secure than it formerly did. And, contrary
to what one would have expected only a few decades ago, this sense
of where matters stand has had almost nothing to do with a desire
on anyone’s part to cast one or another offending version of
Marxism out of the fold. For self-identified Marxists in the West, the
most likely candidates for exclusion would have to have been the
reigning doctrines in some or all of the officially Marxist regimes in
power. One might therefore have thought that doubts about the
soundness of the designation ‘Marxist’ would have originated with
those who wanted to retain the name for their own doctrinal
commitments, while renouncing some or all official Marxisms. But
this is not what happened. Long before communism fell or lapsed,
it was very nearly a consensus view among self-identified Marxists,
especially younger ones, that there was no reason to defend, much
less extend, Soviet or Chinese communism. Communism in power
had brought discredit upon itself and therefore upon Marxism too,
insofar as it was understood to be a kind of Marxism. But, for many
years after this conviction had become commonplace, Marxism not
only survived; it flourished. Then, ironically, as the Soviet Union
passed from the scene, Marxism did too. It is a sign of the times that
its absence has been so easily accommodated in the intellectual
culture; and that even erstwhile Marxists, insofar as they pay it heed,
do not seem particularly upset.
It is for future historians to make sense of this strange turn of
events. I will only address a small part of the larger story – the part
that concerns recent Marxist philosophy and the circumstances in
which it existed. From that vantage point, it looks as if, in the end,
it was philosophy, more than anything else, that did Marxism in.
Almost without realizing what they were doing, some of Marxism’s
most philosophically adept practitioners effectively – though, for the
most part, only implicitly – came to the view that there is nothing
distinctive to ‘Marxism’ at all except, of course, its history. This
conclusion, if true, would be of great importance to anyone who
would reflect on Marxism’s future. For if there is nothing distinc-
tively Marxist, then the question of Marxism’s future would amount
to nothing more than a question about the future of those

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