This lecture
was delivered in the summer of 1966 after the publication of the
two texts For Marx and Reading Capital. Although
it adds little new, this small piece shows something of Althusser's
understanding of the nature of French philosophy and of Marxism,
and what he understood as the objectives of his theoretical research.
By philosophical
conjuncture Althusser means two things. The historical developments
within French philosophy and the dominant and minor currents within
the contemporary situation. However he also appears to consider
the conjuncture as something of a situation that has itself arisen
through the imperatives of the moment that are not the object
of a historical analysis but rather of the material effects of
the practice of philosophy itself. Hence Althusser tries to argue
that the meeting where the speech is being held has not been initiated
by Althusser himself, but rather by a necessity engendered by
the currents of research he is describing and out of the imperatives
of the research itself to bring together this collaboration. (cf
p. 2 The Humanist Controversy, Verso 2003 and p. 17 (fn) Althusser's
point is that the meeting is a 'play without an author' and that
each of the participants are there as particular structural effects
of the conjuncture'.
The dominant
element conditioning the contemporary juncture Alhusser calls
religious spiritualism which he traces back as far as the middle
ages. Alongside it lies a rationalist idealist trend which develops
out of Cartesianim, in its critical idealist form (Kant and Husserl)
it was, according to Althusser, at the time of writing, alive
and dominant in theoretical French philosophy. Alongside the religious-spiritualist
and the rationalist- idealist current lies a third: rationalist-empiricism
which is in turn divided into two types; idealist and materialist.
Both types persist in the philosophy of sciences and can be traced
to the C17th (Diderot and Comte are mentioned here). Althusser
regards the C19th as a low point for French philosophy (only the
positivist Comte 'saved its honour') and it and the early C20th
are characterised as a period of profound philsophical reaction;
that is 'reactionary philosophy (p. 5) In critiquing this reactionary
philosophy (mentioned are Maine de Biran, Bergson, Victor Cousin,
Ravaisson, Boutroux, Lachelier) which failed to read, recognise
and understand neither Kant, nor Hegel, Althusser gives some of
the clearest pointers to those thinkers within the rational and
critical idealist camp that he admires for having attempted to
combat it and forced the religious spiritualism on the retreat.
Here he mentions positivists and Utopians like Durkheim and Comte,
and Fourier, Saint-simon, Cournot, Freud, (Nietsche) and 'of course'
Marx. For Althusser the moment of the spiritualist current has
passed under the pressure of scientific thought and its adherents
persist only by the modern 'religion' of art. He argues that in
the current time French Philosophy is undergoing a second moment
defined by the exhaustion and crisis of the critical, rationalist
idealism. It is at this juncture that Althuser's true intellectual
oject is revealed, with the mushrooming of different philosophies,
his target is the intellectual terrain of the human sciences -
to critique the ideology contained within the ideational problematic
of the sciences themselves. Althusser seeks a two pronged attack
on spirtualism and on critical idealism and it is almost too obvious
that for him Marxism is the theoretical field in which this is
to be accomplished.
Having yet
failed to provide many reasons at all for his antipathy to these
currents, Althusser continues to delineate two component parts
of Marxist theoretical inquiry and prospective areas of necessary
inquiry within them. Distinguishing between Marxism as historical
materialism (science of history) and Marxism as dialectical
materialism (philosophy) for Althusser serves to correct
what he admits as an error in Reading Capital in over-emphasising
theoretical production above empirical research and failing to
provide a proper theoretical account of the workings of the latter.
And yet if the readers of Reading Capital were dismayed
by the abstract nature of the explanation of theoretical practice
they will be further exasperated by the general and restricted
vision enunciated by Althusser here. The basic nature of the questions
that are being posed seem to show a theoretical orientation that
in the context of the rise of social movements at the time is
quite naieve and specifically western in its orientation. And
yet despite the terribly underdeveloped nature of what are outlined
as seven strategic questions for Marxism as a theoretical practice,
they can be understood largely as arising out of a committed anti-humanist
standpoint albeit with a confessed committment towards Marx and
Marxism as a scientific philosophy. These strategic questions
range from critique of the individual, of ideology, of the theory
of theoretical practice, general theory of discourse, theory of
the subject. These are all elements grounded in the following
orientation:
"the
basic task of Marxist theory, its strategic task, has Marxist
theory itself for its object"
Ultimately
what Althusser means by Marxist theory is the struggle within
Marxism for the appropriate understanding of its own practice.
This itself is a common enough gesture. What follows is: "There
can be no defining Marxist theory in the absence of a struggle
against ideoloigcal interpretations of Marxist theory" against
the "misinterpretations, distortions, prejudices and ignorance
of Marxism" that reign outside and within the Marxist context
(p. 10). There is something of a stalinist flavour to the manner
in which Althusser calls for the purging of ideological, spiritualist
and humanist elements from within Marxism. Moreover there it is
discomforting to read how confident Althusser is that his system
is the authentic interpretation of the current and why it is not
seen that the plurality of what goes under the name of Marxism
as a practice disqualifies it from having a theoretical congruity
of the type Althusser utlimately seeks to achieve (like his projected
but abandoned manuscript on the unity of theory and practice).
The difficulty with Althusser's positing of the theoretical task
of Marxism to know and define its own theory is that it is becomes
dependent upon the existence of internal conflict over the nature
of the system itself. It can not reach a correct position because
this would ultimately involved an identical structural effect
amongsts its practioners and Marxism as a general theoretical
practice could not develop into anything except satisfaction with
itself. What this statement can only mean is the becoming superior
of one element within the general field of (theoretical practice).
Followin the strategic theoretical
issues, Althusser draws a list of prospective and necessary avenues
for empirical and historical research. These include very familar
themes: general theory of historical materialism, the nature of
imperialism, theory of the state and law, theory of political
practice, of historical forms of individuality. Althusser elaborates
nothing as to what the theoretical accomplishments can add to
these studies nor does he provide any insight into how they might
be resolved. For all the talk of the importance of the conjuncture
and the allusion to the Leninist 'concrete analysis of a concrete
situation' Althusser's attempt to steer the practical development
of marxist theory is only incidentally interesting and should
be left to those still under its yoke to catalogue it in its proper
place.
Notes taken by Erik
Empson for www.generation-online.org
- 23 November 2003
