Abstract
“Marxism is not historicism,” Louis Althusser correctly noted in the 1960s. Although this chapter is not focused only on the French philosopher, his motto serves to initiate a discussion of the conception of history in Marx. At first, the effective shortcomings of a purely historical approach to understanding the contemporary capitalist society are addressed. Immediately following this, however, I argue that the theoretical demotion of historical analysis also does not do justice to the complexity of Marx’s thought. In sum, the objective here is to make more transparent the very particular relation between systematic structures and the living history of human beings, a complex relation that does not allow hollowing out the importance of any of its constitutive poles. It is consequently necessary to return to some crucial aspects of Marx’s own arguments which, in my understanding, were not optimally received by Althusser.
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Notes
- 1.
Louis Althusser, ‘The Object of Capital’, in Reading Capital, ed. Louis Althusser and Étienne Balibar (London: Verso, 1997), 125–26.
- 2.
Ibid., 124.
- 3.
Althusser especially liked this formulation, which is by Marx himself. It can be found in Karl Marx, ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’, in MECW, vol. 6 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 167.
- 4.
Althusser, ‘The Object of Capital’, 107.
- 5.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, in MECW, vol. 6 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 482.
- 6.
Karl Marx, ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’, in MECW, vol. 29 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 263–64.
- 7.
Those familiar with Althusser will note that I am not adhering to his periodization of Marx’s work (supported even in Essays in Self-criticism), which claims that there is an epistemological break, separating the young Marx from the mature Marx. Cf. Louis Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism (London: NLB, 1976), 61–70. Although there are important differences in Marx’s trajectory, I agree in this respect with István Mészáros, who, in contrast to Althusser, maintains that it is possible and necessary to establish an affirmative relationship with the works of the author’s youth. Cf.: István Mészáros, Marx’s Theory of Alienation (London: Merlin Press, 1986), 217–25.
- 8.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘The German Ideology’, in MECW, vol. 5 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 50.
- 9.
Despite that at certain moments in his work Hegel ironized the naïf teleology that circulated at that time in the philosophical debate, the fact is that he can be caught falling into finalism. Here is one of many examples: “Nature’s goal is to kill itself, break the crust of the immediate, the sensual, to burn itself like a phoenix, to emerge from this external appearance rejuvenated like Spirit.” G. W. F. Hegel, ‘Enzyklopädie Der Philosophischen Wissenschaften Im Grundrisse II’, in Werke, vol. 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 538. Assuming to have unveiled a purpose in nature as whole, Hegel understood that it has a goal (Ziel) to be achieved.
- 10.
Marx and Engels, ‘The German Ideology’, 50. The expression “discovery (Entdeckung) of America” is used here in accordance with the nineteenth-century terminology present in Marx’s text. Contemporary historiography rightly points out the problematic character of the expression. However, this necessary remark does not compromise the core of the argument in focus here.
- 11.
In this particular aspect, Althusser made too much of a split between the so-called real object and the object of knowledge, affirming that it would be an “empiricist ideology” to confuse them. Cf. Althusser, ‘The Object of Capital’, 134. I will return to this point later.
- 12.
Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1982), 284.
- 13.
Friedrich Engels, ‘Engels to Joseph Bloch, 21–22 September 1890’, in MECW, vol. 49 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 35.
- 14.
The texts by Raymond Aron are perhaps the best-known and simultaneously the most cartoonish examples of this criticism. Cf.: Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1962), 56.
- 15.
Karl Marx, ‘Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’, in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Manifesto (New York: Prometheus Books, 1988), 103.
- 16.
Marx, Capital, 929 (translation revised according to the German original).
- 17.
“All I know is that I'm not a Marxist.” Friedrich Engels, ‘Engels to Conrad Schmidt, 05 August, 1890’, in MECW, vol. 49 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 7.
- 18.
Karl Marx, ‘Letter to Otechestvenniye Zapiski’, in MECW, vol. 24 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 200.
- 19.
Marx, Capital, 273.
- 20.
Karl Marx, ‘Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858’ (Grundrisse), in MECW, vol. 28 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 44.
- 21.
Marx, ‘Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858’, 44.
- 22.
Ibid., 388–89.
- 23.
But the two texts are certainly not identical: it is known that Marx began Capital—differently than Grundrisse—with an analysis of commodities, and not money (to mention just one of a number of differences with theoretical consequences).
- 24.
Marx, Capital, 139.
- 25.
Ibid., 152.
- 26.
Althusser, ‘The Object of Capital’, 124–26.
- 27.
Marx, ‘Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858’, 388.
- 28.
Ibid., 388.
- 29.
György Lukács, Pensamento Vivido (Santo André; Viçosa: Ad hominem; Editora UFV, 1999), 145.
- 30.
Karl Marx, ‘Marx to Engels, 19 November 1860’, in MECW, vol. 41 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), 232. On the other hand, well known are Marx’s reservations regarding the transposition—which would have been made by Darwin—of typical categories of a capitalist society to the sphere of natural phenomena.
- 31.
Norman Levine, Divergent Paths: Hegel in Marxism and Engelsism (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2006), 73.
- 32.
José Arthur Giannotti, ‘Contra Althusser’, in Exercícios de Filosofia (Seleções CEBRAP 2) (São Paulo: Ed. Brasiliense, 1975), 100.
- 33.
Ibid., 93. For a comprehensive discussion of the category of real abstraction, I refer the reader to my article: Martins, Maurício Vieira. On Real Objects That Are Not Sensuous: Marx and Abstraction in Actu’, in Marx and Contemporary Critical Theory: The Philosophy of Real Abstraction, ed. Antonio Oliva, Ángel Oliva, and Iván Novara (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 191–202. The article examines Marx’s distance from empiricist conceptions that reduce reality to its sensuous dimension.
- 34.
Marx, ‘Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858’, 41.
- 35.
Florestan Fernandes, A Revolução Burguesa No Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1976).
- 36.
As is the case with Jessé Souza, in his book Como o racismo criou o Brasil [How racism created Brazil] (Rio de Janeiro: Estação Brasil, 2021).
- 37.
Althusser, ‘The Object of Capital’, 133–34.
References
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Vieira Martins, M. (2022). “Marxism Is Not a Historicism”: Successes and Limits of an Althusserian Thesis. In: Marx, Spinoza and Darwin. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13025-0_4
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