[lbo-talk] "Process without a Subject or Goal(s)"

[Ted Winslow]

Yoshie quoted Althusser:

> These philosophical positions are of course not without their  
> consequences. Not only, for example, do they imply that Marxism has  
> nothing to do with the "anthropological question" ("What is man?"), or  
> with a theory of the  
> realization-objectification-alienation-disalienation of the Human  
> Essence (as in Feuerbach and his heirs: theoreticians of philosophical  
> reification and fetishism), or even with the theory of the  
> "excentration of the Human Essence", which only criticizes the  
> idealism of the Subject from within the limits of the idealism of the  
> Subject, dressed up with the attributes of the "ensemble of social  
> relations" of the sixth Thesis on Feuerbach -- but they also allow us  
> to understand the sense of Marx's famous "little phrase" in the  
> Eighteenth Brumaire.
>
> This comment, in its complete form, reads as follows: "Men make their  
> own history, but they do not make it out of freely chosen elements  
> (aus freien Stücken), under circumstances chosen by themselves, but  
> under circumstances (Umstände) directly encountered (vorgefundene),  
> given by and transmitted from the past." And -- as if he had foreseen  
> the exploitation of these first five words, and even these  
> "circumstances" from which Sartre draws out such dazzling effects of  
> the "practico-inert", that is, of liberty -- Marx, in the Preface to  
> the Eighteenth Brumaire, written seventeen years later (in 1869, two  
> years after Capital), set down the following lines: "I show something  
> quite different (different from the ideology of Hugo and of Proudhon,  
> who both hold the individual Napoleon III to be the [detestable or  
> glorious] cause "responsible " for the coup d'état), namely how the  
> class struggle (Marx's emphasis) in France created the circumstances  
> (Umstände) and the relations (Verhältnisse) which allowed (ermöglicht)  
> a person (a subject) so mediocre and grotesque to play the role of a  
> hero".
>
> One must read one's authors closely. History really is a "process  
> without a Subject or Goal(s)", where the given circumstances in which  
> "men" act as subjects under the determination of social relations are  
> the product of the class struggle. History therefore does not have a  
> Subject, in the philosophical sense of the term, but a motor: that  
> very class struggle.


The claim that one can and should "read one's authors closely" is  
inconsistent with the claim that one is not a "subject" (in the sense  
of a self-determined being able to rationally self-determine an  
author's meaning i.e. base interpretive claims on the evidence of  
texts).  On Althusseur's ontological premises, no one's interpretation  
of a text can be consistently conceived as "determined" in this way.   
All intepretations must be "ideological" in his sense, a sense that  
excludes any role for self-determination.

His own interpretation of the texts in question is mistaken.

In the second passage Marx is rejecting the role Hegel assigns to   
World-Historical Individuals in his account of the historical  
development of human subjectivity to rational self-consciousness.  I  
pointed to this difference between Hegel and Marx a week or so ago in  
the context of explicating a passage from Engels that makes use of  
Hegel's idea of the "passions." As I also pointed out there, part of  
the meaning of this idea that Marx sublates is the idea that human  
individuals are real subjects in the above sense characterized by a  
potential for what Hegel defines as a "will proper" and a "universal  
will" i.e. by a potential for rational self-consciousness.

This means that the claim that, for Hegel, "the dialectic at work in  
history is not the work of any Subject whatsoever" is also mistaken if  
it includes the meaning that Hegel doesn't conceive human individuals  
as real subjects (i.e. as self-determined beings potentially able to  
rationally self-determine their ideas and actions).  As I've said,  
Hegel defines human being as the potential for a "will proper" and a  
"universal will."  In the Philosophy of History he explicitly connects  
this idea to his conception of the role of individuals in historical  
development.

"But though we might tolerate the idea that individuals, their desires  
and the gratification of them, are thus sacrificed, and their happiness  
given up to the empire of chance, to which it belongs; and that as a  
general rule, individuals come under the category of means to an  
ulterior end, — there is one aspect of human individuality which we  
should hesitate to regard in that subordinate light, even in relation  
to the highest; since it is absolutely no subordinate element, but  
exists in those individuals as inherently eternal and divine. I mean  
morality, ethics, religion. Even when speaking of the realisation of  
the great ideal aim by means of individuals, the subjective element in  
them — their interest and that of their cravings and impulses, their  
views and judgments, though exhibited as the merely formal side of  
their existence, — was spoken of as having an infinite right to be  
consulted. The first idea that presents itself in speaking of means is  
that of something external to the object, and having no share in the  
object itself. But merely natural things — even the commonest lifeless  
objects — used as means, must be of such a kind as adapts them to their  
purpose; they must possess something in common with it. Human beings  
least of all, sustain the bare external relation of mere means to the  
great ideal aim. Not only do they in the very act of realising it, make  
it the occasion of satisfying personal desires, whose purport is  
diverse from that aim — but they share in that ideal aim itself; and  
are for that very reason objects of their own existence; not formally  
merely, as the world of living beings generally is — whose individual  
life is essentially subordinate to that of man, and is properly used up  
as an instrument. Men, on the contrary, are objects of existence to  
themselves, as regards the intrinsic import of the aim in question. To  
this order belongs that in them which we would exclude from the  
category of mere means, - Morality, Ethics, Religion. That is to say,.  
And we affirm — without entering at present on the proof of the  
assertion -that Religion, Morality, &c. have their foundation and  
source in that principle, and so are essentially elevated above all  
alien necessity and chance. And here we must remark that individuals,  
to the extent of their freedom, are responsible for the depravation and  
enfeeblement of morals and religion. This is the seal of the absolute  
and sublime destiny of man — that be knows what is good and what is  
evil; that his destiny is his very ability to will either good or evil,  
— in one word, that he is the subject of moral imputation, man is an  
object of existence in himself only in virtue of the Divine that is in  
him, — that which was designated at the outset as Reason; which, in  
view of its activity and power of self-determination, was called  
Freedom imputation not only of evil, but of good; and not only  
concerning this or that particular matters and all that happens ab  
extrâ, but also the good and evil attaching to his individual freedom.  
The brute alone is simply innocent. It would, however demand an  
extensive explanation — as extensive as the analysis of moral freedom  
itself — to preclude or obviate all the misunderstandings which the  
statement that what is called innocent imports the entire  
unconsciousness of evil — is wont to occasion."   
<http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/ 
history3.htm#III>

Ted