Wolff, Althusser, and Hegel: Outlining an Aleatory Materialist Epistemology

Abstract

In an argument first published in 1996, Richard Wolff showed that Marxist epistemology could be strengthened by introducing the Althusserian concept of overdetermination and elements of the Hegelian dialectic. While this essay wholeheartedly agrees with Wolff's work toward a reflexive Marxism, it finds his proposed reinsertion of Hegelian philosophy into Marxism problematic and argues that an alternative to Hegelianism can be found in Althusser's arguments for aleatory materialism. Highlighting the importance of “chance” events, aleatory materialism contains the same epistemological reflexivity that Wolff finds in Hegel's dialectic yet provides a stronger supporting ontology for Marxist theory. Aleatory materialism supports Marxist epistemology by detailing arguments for historical conjunctures that contain both overdetermined contradictions and situated causality. From this perspective, it becomes possible to argue that epistemology can contain both theoretical analysis of contradictions and concrete analysis. This allows for complexity without abstraction and specificity without reductionism or essentialism.

Key Words:

• Aleatory Materialism
• Conjuncture
• Louis Althusser
• Marxist Epistemology
• Richard Wolff

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Frank Pearce, R. Paul Datta, and Mira Bachvarova for their many discussions, insights, and comments. My thanks also to the two anonymous reviewers. All mistakes, of course, remain mine alone.

Notes

1. Elements of this and the following section are adapted from Hardy (2012, 128–45).

2. This should not be confused with Marx's “process without a subject.” Hegel always maintained that there was a subject to dialectical transformations; Marx argued the contrary (his famous inversion of Hegel), saying that material change was most important.

3. An analogy might be someone describing the facial features of another person—but all the while never realizing that, in fact, they are describing a reflection of themselves.

4. See also Resnick and Wolff (1987, 90).

5. For a recent and very engaging discussion of overdetermination, see the special issue of Rethinking Marxism 24 (3).

6. This comment appears in a letter to J. Bloch, 21 September 1890.

7. A good analogy for the effects between these relations is language: language enables different forms of expression yet consists of a definite structure. This structure does not absolutely determine what can be said, but it does define and restrict possible actions (i.e., possible expressions).

8. Capitalism is defined by the linkage of property and economic power relations. This is compared to feudalism that linked property and political power relations (Hindess and Hirst 1975, 227; Althusser and Balibar 2006, 217; Marx 1990, 175–6n35).

9. Published in French in 1968, only three years after the 1965 edition of For Marx, the discussion in Reading “Capital” of Balibar's account of the move in Britain from the feudal mode of production to the capitalist mode of production is a prime example (Althusser and Balibar 2006, 199–308).

10. See Althusser (2006, 169, 190) and Resnick and Wolff (1987, 91).

11. As Althusser (2006, 264) argued, this is Marx's “genius” in expressing cause not as an absolute “law” but as a “tendency.”