Query on Althusser

[James Farmelant]

Althusser's *Pour Marx* was in its time an important book.  At the time
it came Marxist philosophizing was dominated by humanistic brands
of Marxism (i.e. Sartre's) which emphasized Marx's earlier writings
like the *1844 Manuscripts* over his later writings including *Capital.*
By drawing attention back to Marx's mature writings and by reemphasizing
the scientific aspects of Marx's project Althusser performed an
invaluable service.  On the hand his reading of Marx was quite flawed
in a number of respects:

1).  Althusser in interpreting Marx revived the Stalinist distinction 
between the 'young' Marx and the 'older' Marx.  For Althusser the
'young' Marx and the 'older' were separated by an 'epistemological
rupture' between a Marx committed to a Hegelian-Feuerbachian
humanism and a Marx committed to a science of history conceived of
as a 'process without a subject.'  As formulated by Althusser this
argument was seriously deficient as a reading of Marx's texts.
Undoubtedly as Marx matured his work manifested changes in emphasis
as he went from abstract philosophy to political economy but Althusser's
interpretation is difficult to justify on a full reading of Marx's texts.
Indeed, I doubt there is any prominent Marx scholars who would take
it seriously.

2).  ALthusser emphasized the scientificity of Marx's work yet
Althusser's
own conception of science is open to question.  His conception of the
three
Generalities seems to have pretty idealist in character.  In this and
other
respects ALthusser drew upon the work of his teacher Gaston Bachelard
who was one of the sources of pomo theorizing on science.

3).  Althusser as an interpreter of Marx had the bad habit of reading
many
of his own idiosyncratic ideas concerning Marx into Marx's texts.  There
is IMO nothing wrong with using Marx's texts as a springboard for
developing ones own theorizing about social reality.  But to develop
one's
own idiosyncratic interpretations and then read these back into Marx's
writings and claim that this what Marx "really said"  seems to me to be
disingenuous.

Althusser was no doubt a looney toon.  Nietzsche was too of course but
much of his work is quite valuable.  The value of a thinker's must
ultimately
be judged on this basis of whether it coheres together, whether it
provides
compelling explanations of external reality, whether it can provide an
effective
guide for practice and so on.  IMO there is some valuable insights in 
Althusser's writings but there also some serious deficiencies.

		Jim Farmelant
On Mon, 01 Jun 1998 11:46:11 +0100 Mark Jones <Jones_M at netcomuk.co.uk>
writes:
>Carrol, Althusser was another of these ouanqueres and a real loony 
>toon. He
>retracted his denial, but I reckon its obvious he never read Capital. 
>So 'Lire
>le Capital' was just a neopomo joke.
>
>Mark
>
>Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> I remember very vaguely about an announcement by Althusser near the 
>end of
>> his life to the effect that he had never read *Capital*. I assume my
>> memory is at least partly false, but I wondered if anyone on this 
>list
>> happens to have knowledge of anything like this.
>>
>> (I'm reading a critique of Althusser, parts of which suggest that if 
>he
>> did read *Capital* he didn't really pay much attention to it.)
>>
>> Carrol
>
>
>
>

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