Reading Marx again

Over time, the quantitative difference grows between what Marx wrote and what those coming after Marx have written. However, rather than a process in which those following have built constructively beyond Marx’s original foundations, the substantive history of western Marxism is characterized by the increasing impoverishment of Marx’s epochal philosophy. The history of Marxism is a tragic story of decline in in the understanding and development of Marx’s original project linked with doctrinal splits, stultifying orthodoxy, and recurring crises.

There have been periods of great innovation and critical renovation, especially in the classic work of Lukacs (1971) and Gramsci (1971) who sought to reconcile Marx’s writings with Lenin’s revisionist praxis. However, book-ended by doctrinal crises, the latest cycle of Marxist innovation unleashed by Althusser’s writing, especially For Marx (1969) and Reading Capital (1970), has ultimately intensified Marxism’s current degenerative slide towards a narrow scholastic ‘normal science’ increasingly disconnected from Marx’s actual writing. The spectre of Althusser weighs like a nightmare on the minds of living Marxists!

Althusser’s concept of ‘overdetermination’ does fill a gap, by making explicit what was only implicit, in Marx’s conceptual framework. Many following, including French Regulation School thinkers (Lipietz, 1993), Poulantzas’s (1975a, 1975b) state and class theory, Laclau and Mouffe's (1985) post-Marxism and Stuart Hall’s (2017) cultural Marxism, have innovatively applied ‘overdetermination’. However, while moving Marxism forward in some ways for a while, Althusser’s reading of Marx is now stifling further development. Instead, it is leading a deadening degenerative descent towards Marxism’s worst crisis that has specific roots are in Althusser’s textually bankrupt idea of an ‘epistemological break’ between Marx’s early and mature writing.

Crises of Marxism are always about whether or not and how we read Marx. Today, ageing gatekeepers of Althusser-led ‘normal science’ academic Marxism seem to think that reading Marx again is simply revisiting arcane debates that have already been settled. However, though Althusser won the day, his false ‘epistemological break’ argument is central to Marxism’s present crisis. It has impoverished Marx’s worldview, undermining both how we understand contemporary capitalism and Marxism’s potential for practically reversing capitalism’s present multi-pronged global crisis. In short, there are urgent reasons to read Marx again now.

Althusser revealingly wrote that there is ‘no innocent reading [or non-reading] of Marx’ (Althusser & Balibar, 1970, pp. 14–15). He is implying that, including his own reading, ulterior purposes drive instrumental ‘readings’ of Marx’s text. This, in itself, is not necessarily a problem, but becomes a deep problem when it implies mis-reading or non-reading of the text. In Reading Capital, there is almost no explicit reference to either Capital Vol. 1’s text, method or substantive account. More broadly, Althusser’s ‘epistemological break’ claim is a textually un-founded non-innocent view. It is actually driven by Althusser’s pre-existing subject-position and instrumental concerns, notably his anti-humanism, the influence of his teacher Bachelard who studied epistemological breaks, and his French Communist Party based attachment to orthodoxy (see Peters et al., 2020). In sum, Althusser’s ‘epistemological break’ reading of Marx non-innocently does violence to what Marx actually wrote, to his epistemology, and to his evolving account of capitalism, but it continues, as an unspoken common sense or doxa, to dominate the gaze of western academic Marxism.

It is legitimate to seek a ‘Marx beyond Marx’ by building on what is implicit or undeveloped in his writing, or by observing flaws, inconsistences, tensions and uneven development in his mode of inquiry and account. However, Althusser’s non-innocent ‘reading’ of Marx has further encouraged the practice of using Marx’s writings to serve an external purpose that is not consistent with or even grounded in the actual text. This is noticeable in Negri’s Marxism, sponsored by Althusser himself, which strategically bases itself in a textually unfounded reading of the broad notes of the Grundrisse, especially the General Introduction. This non-innocent re-centering of Marx’s Marxism in the Grundrisse affords Negri greater latitude to develop his autonomous Marxist perspective in ways that sidestep the constraints of the much more focused, rigorous, applied and problematic narrative of capitalism that is Capital Vol. 1 (Negri, 1991).

Moreover, the recurring purpose of maintaining orthodoxy that is integral to Althusser’s non-innocence is ‘reading’ Marx’s works as if they formed a robust, complementary and finished whole. For example, contrary to the text itself, Heinrich (2004) splices his reading of Capital Vol. 1 with the class prognosis of the Communist Manifesto. This non-innocent and un-acknowledged splicing makes it appear that Capital Vol. 1 represents the coming together of Marx’s approach as a seamlessly consistent account of capital and class. Actually, a genuine textual investigation of Capital Vol. 1’s political economy shatters the political economy foundations of the Communist Manifesto class prognosis. Similarly, Braverman’s (1974) project to confirm in the case of the Taylorist-Fordist American experience Marx’s account of the capitalist labour process as leading to universal deskilling that conforms again to the Communist Manifesto thesis that the ‘immense majority’ will be reduced to the same deskilled work experience does not make clear its obvious limitations. That is, central to American Taylorism is the rise of knowledge workers, engineers, and managers. In a parallel way, the traditional concept of Marxism-Leninism does not dwell on key ways that Lenin’s praxis contradicts orthodox Marxism.

In Althusser’s ruthless ‘epistemological break’ approach, the seeming robustness of Marx’s episteme is also maintained, but by chopping out the troublesome early texts that complicate and problematize the orthodox reading of Marx’s epochal philosophy. Althusser also uses his epistemological break claim to dismiss other Marxisms. In particular, his circling back of Marxism towards an ‘objectivist’ orthodoxy has silenced alternative readings especially those coming from Lukcas’ Leninism and the Frankfurt School that embraced both Marx’s early and mature writings. Further, while Althusser and many following align themselves with Gramsci’s (1971) reading of Marx’s Marxism, Gramsci’s view that Marx’s Marxism is the ‘philosophy of praxis’ directly contradicts Althusser’s reading. Althusser has driven Marxism’s splitting by constructing a false dichotomy between so-called Hegelian humanists who he treats as not-really Marxists, and orthodox ‘scientific Marxists’ that accept Althusser’s view that is equated with Marxism’s full expression.

Specifically, Althusser’s ‘epistemological break’ claim treats Capital Vol. 1 as the full realization of Marx’s new science because it identifies ‘a process without a subject’ (Althusser, 1976, p. 99). This methodologically naïve reading of Capital Vol. 1 then becomes Althusser’s yardstick against which are evaluated all Marx’s previous writings. Thus, everything written from the German Ideology onwards, though still not quite there, is treated as part of Marx’s movement towards his new science, while everything earlier –including the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, the Poverty of Philosophy and the famous ‘thesis eleven’ of the Theses on Feuerbach- are treated as steeped in Hegelian mysticism. Althusser treats them as representing Marx before he became a Marxist, and therefore are not part of the canon. However, once subjected to textual interrogation, it is easy to demonstrate the intellectual bankruptcy of Althusser’s non-innocent argument.

In contrast to Althusser’s epistemological-break claim, textually grounded analysis demonstrates that Marx’s later work up to and including Capital Vol 1, though not always in the foreground, consistently returns to and revisits the early themes. In the early works dismissed by Althusser, the young Marx lays down themes of subjectivity and praxis. In his conception of praxis, Marx invests causality in human knowledge when it focuses on changing the world. In the seminal 1844 manuscripts, Marx lays down the essential features of his materialist critique of Hegel, key themes of his political economic critique of capitalism, and relatedly, from his account of ‘estranged labour’ Marx constructs a project of human emancipation and well-being that grounds his conception of socialism.

Most disturbingly, those following the orthodox cues of Althussers’ Marxism are susceptible to a Marxism that Gramsci described, when referring to the Second International, as ‘fatalism’. When the structural logic of history appears on side, fatalism bolsters optimism. Now, in this time, fatalism invokes a deep existential crisis. Marxists can see the objective logic of the western capitalist project driving human civilization to the brink of collapse, but their objectivism prevents them from doing anything except watch knowingly, but fatalistically, from the sidelines. More than ever before Marxism needs revolutionary overhaul, in Kuhn’s sense, if it is to help reverse humanity’s current descent towards a new dark age. However, more than ever before Marxism remains entrapped by the fatalism of a normal science Marxism that has removed agency and subjectivity from the canon.

This editorial condenses key arguments of my forthcoming book that via a sustained critique of Althusserian led Marxism has led to an innovative reading of Marx’s project. It non-innocently challenges the standard academic package of contemporary western Marxism that lives in the shadow of Althusser and thus continues to maintain an unsustainable orthodoxy that sidelines themes of alienation, human nature, praxis, subjectivity, agency and socialism; and that is loath to recognise the flaws and breaks in Marx’s Marxism. The non-innocent purpose of this forthcoming book is to demonstrate that these themes are vital components of a renewing of Marx’s perspective that can renovate Marxism so that it can contribute to the making of history in the 21^st century.

As with all crises of Marxism, how we read Marx is central to resolution and moving Marxism forward. However, unlike previous crises, this one arises from the reality that we are now entering western capitalism’s catastrophically destructive end game, when Marxism’s capacity to make history becomes vital but the current normal science of Althussersian based objectivist orthodoxy is stifling its agency. Moreover, in contrast to Althussers’ non-innocent reading of Marx, the forthcoming book’s non-innocent reading is grounded in a critical but faithful interrogation of Marx’s texts. Nonetheless, it seeks Marxism’s movement beyond Althusser and orthodoxy by seeking what Negri refers to as ‘Marx beyond Marx’.

Investigation of Marx’s key writings bookended by the early Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts 1844 and the mature work of Capital Vol. 1 1867, and inter-connected by the pivotal hub of the 1848 Communist Manifesto, demonstrate, contra Althusser, a remarkable consistency in Marx’s mode of inquiry, his political purpose, and in the substantive themes that together define Marxism to the present. Most significantly, Marx’s writings collectively comprise an epochal philosophy that, expressed via class struggle, locates the motor of history in the complex interaction between subjectivity and objectivity. To put it formulaically, Marx’s Marxism is ‘historical materialism’ plus the ‘philosophy of praxis’. However, taken as the singular expression of his dynamically evolving perspective, Marx’s writings form the elements of a Problematic, not a settled science. Subtle but significant tensions exist between his mode of inquiry, as outlined in the General Introduction of the Grundrisse, and the way Marx wants to see it in Capital Vol. 1. Relatedly, rather than a fundamental epistemological break, a crucial ‘break in account’, while unacknowledged in either Marx’s or Marxist writings, separates the class prognosis of the Communist Manifesto from Capital Vol. 1. In short, the latter shatters the former. In sum, there are inconsistencies, tensions and unevenness in Marx’s development of his core themes. Recognition of the unfinished nature of Marx’s project is central to a new renaissance of Marxism that can build critically on Marx’s own foundations rather than breaking them up via unfounded readings in order to maintain the myth of a finished and complete science.