State, Political Power and Revolution: Althusser, Poulantzas, Balibar and the “Debate on the State” (original) (raw)
Related papers
This paper is part of a broader theoretical project for a rereading of some of the crucial theoretical debates of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, especially those related to the theoretical and philosophical interventions of Louis Althusser. Some of the positions sketched here have been initially presented as part of a seminar we coordinated last spring in Athens. We have also discussed as part of preparation the new edition of some of Louis Althusser's major works in Greek.
Louis Althusser's Critique of the Communist Party and the Question of the Postrevolutionary State
This essay explores some aspects of the debate led by Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar on the strategy of the French Communist Party (PCF) in the 1970s. They saw the Eurocommunist turn of the party as a strategy that accepted the influence of social democrats without addressing the crucial question of mass participation in the party. Their criticism of the PCF was also a criticism of the statist strategy in socialist countries at that time, which they saw as a fusion of the socialist state with the working-class party. Althusser radicalized his stance when he demanded that a revolutionary party should stay outside the state, both before and after a socialist revolution. In this text, the references made by Balibar and Althusser to works of Marx and Engels are compared with the political positions developed in the original texts, and some conclusions for contemporary political strategies are hinted at.
A Philosophy for Communism Rethinking Althusser
In A Philosophy for Communism: Rethinking Althusser Panagiotis Sotiris attempts a reading of the work of the French philosopher centered upon his deeply political conception of philosophy. Althusser’s endeavour is presented as a quest for a new practice of philosophy that would enable a new practice of politics for communism, in opposition to idealism and teleology. The central point is that in his trajectory from the crucial interventions of the 1960s to the texts on aleatory materialism, Althusser remained a communist in philosophy. This is based upon a reading of the tensions and dynamics running through Althusser’s work and his dialogue with other thinkers. Particular attention is paid to crucial texts by Althusser that remained unpublished until relatively recently.
A Necessary but Impossible Political Practice: Althusser between Machiavelli and Marx
Historical Materialism, 2020
Althusser's Machiavelli and Us has often been considered as the French Marxist's first step on the path beyond Marxism. This article opposes this interpretation by showing that, while Machiavelli helps Althusser to renounce any attempt to deduce a communist political practice from the necessity portrayed by a theory of history, Althusser was mindful not to identify the relationship between the communist party and the masses with the relationship between the Prince and the people. From a Marxist perspective, a communist political practice must further the autonomous political initiatives of the masses that delineate a tendency towards the withering-away of the state and cannot merge with a practice of governing the people. This is why Marxism must not forsake its theory of history but employ it in the process of the subtraction of the party to its becoming-state by detecting the conditions of impossibility of the duration of a communist political practice.
Outline: Louis Althusser- Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
machines, plants…) and reproduced globally (on the level of the world market). The mechanism for supplying this demand must be thought in terms of the circulation of capital producing (1) the means of production and (2) the means of consumption as they relate to the realization of surplus value.
Marx's Politics-The Tensions in the Communist Manifesto
Political Studies, 1982
The bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian one. ' I N an article in the December 198 1 issue of this journal Michael Levin seeks to demonstrate that the strategy for Germany presented in Part IV of the Manifesto is incompatible with the general theory presented in Part I of that work.* Whereas the one allows for the introduction of Communism in a backward country, the other restricts its introduction to advanced countries. This claimed incompatibility is rightly said to raise 'crucial questions concerning not just the coherence of the Communist Manifesto itself but also of Marxist theory as a ~h o l e ' .~ These questions have been examined in two recent books on Marx's politics, both of which deny for entirely different reasons the claimed tension between the general theory and the particular strategy. Richard Hunt adopts an 'economic determinist' interpretation of the general theory similar to Levin's: on this interpretation, the strategy presented in the Munijesto is a problem because it calls for a 'premature' revolution in backward Germany. Although Levin accepts this inconsistency, Hunt denies it. According to .Hunt, there is a marked contrast between the strategy presented in the Munijesto and Marx's actual strategy. Just as the former contradicts the 'economic determinist' nature of the general theory, so the latter confirms it. In the actual strategy there would be no 'premature' revolution in Germany. Indeed, the revolution would be delayed until capitalism was mature. Alan Gilbert, in contrast, finds such 'arcane' arguments superfluous as a means to reconciling the general theory and the particular strategy. The one is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the other at face value. In the general theory, 'politics' is not reduced to some merely secondary role, and the constraints of 'economic' conditions are drawn very loosely. It is argued by Gilbert, moreover, that particular strategies are not simply deduced from the general theory, but are the product of a conjunction between that theory and the appropriate set of 'auxiliary statements'. These are elicited from the study of the specific setting, using the insights of the general theory to capture particular and salient features. This conjunction between the general theory and auxiliary statements
There are two aspects of imperialist capital in underdeveloped countries. One is the domination of the state power apparently represented by the native bourgeois and feudal classes but actually subservient to the imperialist corporate capital, the other is the hegemonic control in social relations of production due to the operational unity of imperialist capital with a higher organic composition of capital and the lower organic composition of capital in under-developed or developing countries. The first aspect of domination operates in an identitarian framework for primitive accumulation and the second aspect operates in a class framework for establishing the hegemony of the capital. These two mutually inclusive dimensions continuously interact with each other and are in constant motion. This process also creates and recreates the space for the development of capitalism from below as the monopoly imperialist capital strives for both cheap labour and productivity of labour. Thus this process breaks the chain of erosion and retention of feudal relations to make room for the capitalist social relations to be a dominant feature. The process operates in a combined and uneven developmental framework that sets capitalism as a global system. The green revolution in agriculture and the policy of land reform was undertaken to feed the toiling masses who were caught in a situation of food insecurity, but it simultaneously served the interest of imperialist capital for supplying technological equipment and other inputs for agricultural production. The areas beyond the influence of the green revolution were also witnessing the development of capitalism from below because the dynamism of capitalist relations is such that the inchoate form set in motion tries to be a dominant feature by destroying and remoulding all other existing relations, generating such energy that breaks the inertia of idle and static minds to consume the use-value. The law of motion is such that it sets the ground for intense contradiction for the own demise of imperialism. The entire period of neo-liberal restructuring for accumulation of capital through labour-arbitrage has accentuated and deepened this contradiction. The ongoing peasant uprising is inherently an uprising against the imperialist corporate capital for its further penetration and hegemonic control of India’s agricultural landscape. The long neoliberal restructuring from the 1980s has dismantled the organized working class in large factories. The emerging situation gave birth to two extreme divergent trends. The mainstream practicing communist parties who have been functioning within a reformist framework for long, though emphasizing working-class struggle, have discovered the TINA (there is no alternative) factor in the here and now and became the proponent of making some compromises with neoliberal policy. This has become imperative emanating from a desire to cling to power in some states by any means with an alibi to pursue welfare policies in a tacit understanding with the central power where the bourgeois parties rule the roost. CPIM has been advocating such a line from the 1980s when Jyoti Basu’s Bengal Government discovered the TINA factor. The other extreme trend of practicing communist ideology redefined the agency of change, at least in practice, from working-class to caste-identity. The caste-identity question always plays a vital role in Indian politics. Caste is a class in feudal relations of production. The staticity of mindset hindered a section of them to visualize the laws of motion that the inchoate capitalism in developing countries set to become the dominant characteristics surpassing and remoulding all other social relations which lack the vital energy as these are fixed in time and bounded by space. The contradiction between imperialist capital and the capital of neo-colonies is not unidirectional. Their interactions continuously define and redefine the principal contradiction and the principal task of the revolutionaries, the formulaic version once set cannot articulate the changing objective reality and the focus of revolutionary task for all time to come. The caste and identity struggle for democratic sharing of power gathered momentum during the 1980s and this was challenged by the counter-identitarian movement from a reactionary dimension of Hindutva. The Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 was the watershed moment to announce the defeat of the democratic orientation of the identity struggle. The petit-bourgeois leadership of the caste and identities has been incapacitated by the emergence of large-scale wage workers within the bounds of caste and identities. This petit-bourgeois class has been gradually co-opted within the overarching reactionary Hindutva identitarian movement and this ensured the rise of BJP into power. But the emergence of new wage-workers as a universal class has bemused many left protagonists to consider this class as an agency of radical change as Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto when the workers of the large industrial sector in urban centers appeared in the historical scene. But Marx mentioned the appearance of wage workers along with the development of capitalism as a countervailing force and as an agent of change in his other writings, not about a particular form of the working class. It is true that we still don’t know how these disparate unorganized workers dispersed in space can transform themselves from class-in-itself to class-for-itself. But the militant movement that has been surfaced in many parts of the world gives some indications that they are destined to rise to the occasion. It becomes more prominent when capitalist-roaders are envisaging another capitalist restructuring when neo-liberalism not only failed to mitigate the capitalist crisis but also deepened the crisis further, especially when the pandemic situation has disrupted the global value chain. In this transitional phase, both the trends of reformism and culturalism have reached to its logical end. Both find themselves in the cul-de-sac and remain as prisoners of indecision till the Bourgeois gives them a new lease of life through another phase of restructuring.
The problem of the state in Marxist theory and practice from Marx to Lenin
1970
PART IX Rosa Luxem burg and A n to n P a n n ek o ek PART X Max A d le r PART XI G e o r g i i V a l e n t i n o v i c h P le k h a n o v PART X II V l a d im i r I l y i c h U l y a n o v / L e n i n 3 class to another.' Cleavages could arise within a class between the part of it which was absorbed in economic 1 Engels, F. , Anti-Diihring (short title of Herr Eugen Diihring's Revolution in Science, which first appeared in the form of three articles in Vorwärts, Leipzig,