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

Sean Andrews cultstud76 at gmail.com
Mon Feb 22 13:28:06 PST 2010


On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 14:02, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> It is a shabby defence of Althusser to cherry pick his writings to cite only those you agree with and ignore those you don't. I could say just as well that 'The Future Lasts a long Time' is a rare moment of lucidity after years of obscurantism.
>

whatever james. i didn't do that and you know it.


> 'Only Hélène asked me what the hell I was doing in a Party which betrayed the working class in '68 and she was quite right,' Louis Althusser, The Future Lasts a Long Time, p254
>

And this is hardly what you said before. In any case, in the context, it doesn't seem he completely agreed with the assessment at the time.

All this infighting seems to me to confirm Balibar's recent assessment that it is only now, without the Soviet Union, that we can again seriously address Marxism as a theory. I don't think it is, politically, a good thing in the US as I fear it was only with that threat that anything of merit happened in the latter part of the 20th century, at least at the federal level. But it certainly seems that the politics of theory were much more internecine at the time, making it hard to have any progress that wasn't one step forward and four steps back in terms of the betrayal or not of "actually existing socialism."

As per your post that followed vis a vis Castoriadas (another philosopher), throwing up one person's opinion about the centrality of Althusser is not quite hard evidence of said centrality (or of the interpretation of that centrality.) I'd also note here the irony of your earlier statement that his thinking was not the important thing; just his political alignment and party ac. What you've cited is someone who rejects his theory per se and blames the theory itself on the depoliticization of the left. I'm all about interrogating ideas, but it seems that there were plenty of other changes that happened in the 1970s (one important one being the gutting of the state itself in popular ideology as well as, in some places, in fact) that might also have led to this circumstance. On the other hand, there were a variety of other theorists who were also being drawn into the circle to augment Althusser--Foucault, LaFebvre, Jameson, Derrida, Butler, Spivak, and the list goes on: if anything, Althusser is only unique in the sense that, at one point, he was actually active in a party (i.e. the thing that Anderson says separates most of the Western Marxists from Marx). Maybe you don't agree with the side of history he stands on in that regard, but that's the risk one takes: many others couldn't even be bothered to enjoin the struggle directly (and it's worth noting that, in this case, it was a pretty contentious time to be figuring out where one stood in relation to the USSR and Althusser hardly had a congenial relationship with the PCF). I don't know enough about the history in question, but judging from your passion and partiality on the matter, I don't think I can trust your assessment alone.

I'm overposted and, IIRC, arguing with you is pointless anyway. For a time I thought you might give me some insight on the matter but now I see that it's your way or the highway.

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