Abstract
In this chapter I discuss the work of three social scientists who have written about Marx and have drawn on linguistics—or more broadly structuralist analysis—in studying social phenomena: Louis Althusser, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Maurice Godelier. While recognising the originality of their work, and the contributions that they made, I identify some major shortcomings in both Althusser and Lévi-Strauss, concluding rather that it is Godelier who comes closest to successfully combining the merits of Marxist and structuralist methods. But I also conclude that none of the three makes appropriate use of the analogy with language for understanding the complexity of value.
This is a revised version of a chapter in McNeill, D (1988) Fetishism and the Form of Value. Unpublished thesis, University of London.
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Notes
- 1.
De Saussure goes on to note that the comparison is weak in one respect—as discussed below, in relation to Lévi-Strauss.
- 2.
Piaget (another famous writer on structuralism, in this case a child psychologist) suggests that “Saussure … drew his inspiration partly from economics, which in his day chiefly stressed the former (laws of equilibrium rather than laws of development)” (Piaget 1971: 77). It would be interesting if it were indeed the case that it was economics which inspired linguistics and not the other way round; but there seems to be no textual support for this assertion in the passages quoted.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
Although I shall minimise the use of Althusser’s neologisms, a few will inevitably creep in—such as “the problematic” which relates to the important concept of structural causality. Here we may quote Althusser directly:
I put this term forward … because it is the concept that gives the best grasp of the facts without falling into the Hegelian ambiguities of ‘totality’… (t) o think the unity of a determinate ideological unity … by means of the concept of its problematic is to allow the typical systematic structure unifying all the elements of the thought to be brought to light, and therefore to discover in this unity a determinate content. (Althusser 1977: 66)
- 6.
“In all forms of society it is a determinate production and its relations which assign every other production and its relations their rank and influence. It is a general illumination in which all the other colours are plunged and which modifies their special tonalities. It is a special ether which defines the specific weight of every existence arising in it” (the contents of the brackets by Marx 1973 to Grundrisse).
- 7.
A relatively simple but clear example of structural causality has already been referred to in an earlier chapter: how is it that a spinning-jenny “is” capital?
- 8.
Althusser’s followers Hindess and Hirst opened themselves to damaging criticism by their attempts to describe this “effectivity” in mechanical or quasi-mechanical terms—although, as Althusser himself indicated, these are inappropriate for the analysis of this type of causality. I am thinking here particularly of the powerful polemic against Althusser and his followers in which Thompson caricatures the “Marxist Orrery” (Thompson 1978: 100).
- 9.
And to a greater extent Grundrisse—see the remarks of Thompson below.
- 10.
It is less adequate, however, if it is intended as an explanation of the phenomena, as the second extract perhaps implies.
- 11.
What we have at the end of this endeavour, he writes, is “not the overthrow of ‘Political Economy’ but another ‘Political Economy’”. Marx replaced the accepted categories with “anti-categories”, but did not escape the notion of “the economic” (see Chap. 11 for further discussion of this point).
- 12.
He went so far as to describe Marxism as one of his “three mistresses”—along with geology and psychoanalysis (Freud).
- 13.
He acknowledges a debt, however, not to de Saussure but to a later writer, Troubetzkoy.
- 14.
For example, by Lacan in psychoanalysis, Barthes in literature, Derrida in philosophy, Foucault in his studies of power.
- 15.
His work in both these areas of study has been severely criticised. It is not my purpose to evaluate his contribution to anthropology but it cannot be doubted that he had a profound influence within and beyond this discipline.
- 16.
In Structural Anthropology, his only further comments tended to confuse the issue by noting direct interconnections rather than developing the analogy:
These three forms of communication are also forms of exchange which are obviously interrelated (because marriage relations are associated with economic prestations, and language comes into play at all levels). (Lévi-Strauss 1972: 83)
Certainly, marriage is directly linked with exchange of goods (through dowries etc.), and language is involved in both—but this, in itself, adds little to our understanding of any of the three phenomena.
- 17.
He writes also on the subject of reciprocity, where Mauss made a more significant contribution—as discussed in Chap. 12.
- 18.
The theory of games is, however, relevant to a very different anthropological tradition, represented by, for example, Fredrik Barth, the author of Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference (1969). The theory of games adopts a “methodological individualist” approach to the analysis of social phenomena, while structuralism adopts a “methodological holist” approach. See Chap. 7.
- 19.
This also yielded an article on “‘Salt money’ and the circulation of commodities among the Baruya of New Guinea” which has been found relevant to the question: “Is there a ‘historical’ transformation problem?” (Morishima and Catephores 1978).
- 20.
He supports Althusser’s view that the basic difference between Hegel’s and Marx’s dialectics is that in the latter contradiction is always “overdetermined”, but he does little to clarify what “overdetermined” means.
- 21.
Godelier indicates that Lévi-Strauss’ analysis of myth has close parallels with Marx’s concern with fetishism:
Because it is constructed by analogy, the mythico-religious world represents the world in the theatrical sense of ‘putting on a performance’, and this corresponds to Marx’s concept in Darstellung. Marx used this concept to indicate the spontaneous illusory representations of economic and social relations as they are perceived by the economic agents who support these social relations. (Godelier 1977: 182)
- 22.
There is a comment in his reference to Lévi-Strauss’s work on Murngin kinship which might be an instructive pointer in the direction of further work:
He (Lévi-Strauss) then showed that such a system would be unstable and that this would determine what form and types of evolution were possible. … These capacities therefore are the objective properties of the structures. … Seen in this perspective, social evolution ceases to be a series of meaningless accidents. (Godelier 1970: 347)
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McNeill, D. (2021). The Limitations of Structural Marxism. In: Fetishism and the Theory of Value. Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56123-9_9
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