[lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism'

[James Heartfield]

'It is precisely at this point [i.e. post-1968] that structuralism became the dominant fashion. An era of inanities on the death of man, of the subject, of history etc.; of empty discourses on "scientificity" and "the economy" (without Marxo-Althusserian "science" ever producing a single statement saying something about the actual economy); of the denunciation of the idea of alienation as "Hegelian"; of the continued cover-up of the bureaucracy and of Stalinism by silence pure and simple, or by imputing concentrations camps to Stalin's "humanism" - whereby Althusser attained the distinction of acting more dishonourably than [Louis] Aragon which is no small feat. ... While a new contestation was developing, while people were searching for, and beginning to create, new attitudes, norms values, the accent was placed on "structures" so as to evacuate living history.'

Cornelius Castoriadis, 'The Diversionists', in Political and Social Writings Volume 3, p274