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

farmelantj at juno.com farmelantj at juno.com
Mon Feb 22 12:40:14 PST 2010


Well Foucault had long bailed out of the PCF (by the early 1950s) and yet he was a major proponent of the "death of man" and of antihumanism. Levi-Strauss's work, could and was, given an antihumanist interpretation too. In the 1960s and 1970s, that sort of thing became quite the fashion among French intellectuals whether they were Marxists or not.

Anyway, James's critique of Althusser seems to be more moralistic (in the worst sense of that term) than scientific.

Jim F. http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant

---------- Original Message ---------- From: "James Heartfield" <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Subject: [lbo-talk] Althusser, NLR and the meaning of 'Stalinism' Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:10:12 -0000

'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 ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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