1Dancing over the ‘middle ground’
Social heterogeneity and capitalism
Our societies are not simply societies in the abstract but, rather, capitalist societies or, more accurately, social formations where capitalism is the dominant mode of production. These same societies are nonetheless irreducibly plural, in the sense that their phenomenal diversity cannot be reduced to any single common denominator. Starting from this dual recognition, we aim to develop a social theory that enables us to grasp the various social determinants of historical development at play in a given conjuncture, together with the various social tensions and conflicts coterminous with the former. In our opinion, theorizing capitalist societies from a holistic perspective requires, at one and the same time, to study the internal dynamics of the capitalist mode of production (i.e. the internal evolution of its constituent elements as well as the various relations existing among them at a given time and place), as well as the various processes through which people make sense of the social conditions in which they are immersed (i.e. how people react, contest, acquiesce, consent, or struggle against them).
In our view, when analyzing the relation between the diverse social processes through which material (re-)production is organized, and the modalities and nature of socio-political interactions accompanying it, two main risks should be avoided at all costs. On the one hand, a reductionist and/or economicist approach to politics needs to be discarded. In other words, political interaction among social agents should under no circumstances be derived in a straightforward fashion from the position the latter occupy in the social organization of material (re-)production. On the other hand, a voluntarist approach to politics, that is, one that understands that individuals have the capacity to re-shape the existing social order according to their respective wills, needs to be equally rejected. In contemporary social theory, these Scylla and Charybdis of social theory may be associated to orthodox Marxism and postmodern social theory, respectively. Instead, the strength and stubbornness of the various social processes delimiting the scope for political action, as well as the latter’s contingent instantiation within a given spatio-temporal location, must be acknowledged. Neither are co-existing social domains ultimately immune to capitalism’s internal dynamics, nor the latter constitute a sort of all-embracing logic determining, in a mirror-like fashion, the historical evolution of the former.
Before proceeding, some basic methodological precepts that are to inform our theoretical investigation should be laid bare. Only by reference to them can our theoretical goals and motivations be situated, and the more or less successful character of our enterprise be ultimately ascertained.
Firstly, our societies are not abstract, internally coherent entities, nor mere aggregations of discrete elements. On the contrary, they are societies where capitalism is the dominant mode of production. By mode of production it is understood an ensemble of social relations regulating how, in a given social setting, economic surplus is produced, appropriated, and distributed among the various participants involved. Capitalism is an inherently unstable and crisis-prone social system, where intervals of socio-institutional stability always precede periods of more intense social turmoil and radical transformation. These latter periods are referred to as systemic crises, where profound social change is not only advisable but even necessary from the perspective of systemic preservation, thus considerably widening the existing scope for political intervention. The dominance of capitalism in these social formations means that the internal evolution of the former molds and shapes to a greater extent the historical evolution of the remaining social processes partaking in the latter.
Secondly, a dimension of conflict and antagonism underlies the social ensembles we are referring to. Social conflicts and antagonisms are not deemed to be a social malfunction nor a historical anomaly but, on the contrary, they are understood to be ontologically primary and constitutive themselves of social objectivity. It thus follows that the social analyst’s task is not to discern how conflicts might emerge from an otherwise harmonious social environment but, on the contrary, to appraise how such an antagonistic dimension is perennially channeled and negotiated through and through, so that a social order can be satisfactorily self-reproduced over time. Therefore, societies are not themselves constitutive (meaning that some internal and essential features would hold the key to decipher its outer phenomenological appearance) but constituted through a thoroughgoing and incessant process of pacification of contingent struggles. Moreover, such an antagonistic dimension is also constitutively ubiquitous, insofar as no specific location within the social structure enjoys any sort of ontological privilege regarding the manifestation of social conflicts. As a corollary, it follows, firstly, that no specific social subject can be granted any a priori privilege regarding its capacity to initiate anti-systemic struggles and, secondly, that no political agent’s identity is derived, in a direct and straightforward manner, from the inner functioning of the underlying social structure but, on the contrary, its emergence is always strictly dependent upon a constitutive and non-determinist process of political mediation.
Thirdly, the phenomenal diversity these societies show in its outer appearance is utterly irreducible to any common denominator that would account, in the last instance, for their observed differences. On the contrary, such social heterogeneity is ontologically primary. It is not meant by this that social subjects’ self-perceived differences do not share some common determinants related to how society’s material (re-)production is organized, but that any observed social unity is always the end result of some process of political production of commonality. In sum, while difference is ontologically primary, social identity is the outcome of political processes aimed at achieving it.
Fourthly, we argue in favor of an anti-essentialist conception of social sciences. By this we mean that social interaction cannot be reduced to the interplay among essences underlying the social, whose search would thus constitute the raison d’etre of social scientists. Instead of splitting social processes into two separate fields (e.g. necessity versus contingency; essences versus appearances), we conceive theoretical processes as co-existing with other social processes within the social totality, with no pre-constituted relations among them. However, rejecting the existence of essences underlying the social does not lead us to praise the utter impenetrability of the social in a nihilistic and postmodern fashion and thus to confine ourselves to merely register the multifarious phenomenological appearance of the world. We do affirm, instead, the necessity of introducing some internal hierarchy among co-existing social processes regarding their differential causal effectivity for, otherwise, we would be abandoning the terrain of social sciences altogether. Nevertheless, these ‘knowledges’ are not expected to reflect in any sense any essential characteristics of the social processes implicated but are themselves just partial and contingent truths, i.e. truths are deemed to be strictly intra-theoretical. As a corollary, social sciences are not concerned with unveiling ‘hidden truths’ waiting to be discovered out there but, rather, they represent a radically partisan enterprise (independently, of course, of its practitioners’ degree of self-consciousness in that respect).
In sum, we aim at developing a theoretical framework that acknowledges the existence of social structures underlying every social interaction (however incomplete and unstable) without deriving the latter from the nature of the former. We aim at giving due recognition to social agents’ capacity of agency without that presuming they operate in an institutional vacuum. We aim at acknowledging that capitalism’s internal dynamics are relevant but not all-embracing; that capitalism is a contingent element in human history but in no way a precarious one; crisis-prone but not teleologically driven towards its own dissolution; complex but not inapprehensible; simple but in no way textbook-like. In the same vein, political action is not economically determined nor completely unconstrained; the constitution of political identities is a relatively autonomous process but in no case a fully independent one; political action is neither omnipotent nor tragically doomed to fail.
We are well aware that the twin dangers of falling into either determinist or voluntarist schemes of social explanation stand as an ever-present threat to our theoretical enterprise. However, we are equally committed to the possibility of finding some ‘middle ground’ among the two, however unstable and slippery, where we would like to situate ourselves.1 Let’s proceed.
The Marxist tradition and the ‘middle ground’
This tension between two different explanatory schemes of social transformation, one leaning towards the primacy of human agency and self-consciousness, the other towards the primacy of structural explanation, has permeated the whole Marxist tradition since its very inception. Indeed, both lines of reasoning can already be identified in the works of Marx himself. On the one hand, we find at the beginning of the Communist Manifesto perhaps the most eloquent expression to date of the first pole: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society in the history of class struggles’ (Marx and Engels 2010 [1848]). On the other, the not less famous Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy holds the opposite view, in what would become the flagship of Marxist orthodoxy in the decades to come. A lengthy quote is due:
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely, relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
(Marx 1977 [1859])
Between these two extreme poles, Marx’s view was definitely more nuanced and complex than has been suggested by the dogmatic, economicist, and fatalist versions to be later instituted as Marxist orthodoxy. While, in Marx’s view, certain structural conditions were needed for social upheaval to be successful in reshaping the social order, the key to actual (and progressive) social transformation within capitalism was ‘the development of the working class into a self-conscious political subject capable of taking control of society’ (Callinicos 2007: 94). Beyond strictly theoretical considerations, it seems that contingent political imperatives were key to determine which facet of Marx’s dual scheme was emphasized. While a fatalistic interpretation of history became entrenched within Marxist orthodoxy, singularly in the writings of the leaders of the Second International (e.g. Kautsky, Bernstein), a revindication of human agency’s capacity of social transformation was emphasized by certain currents of Western Marxism (e.g. Lukács, Korsch, Sartre), themselves a response to the political immobilism advocated by the former.2 Commenting upon this duality, Elliot (2006: 201) writes: ‘For some Marxists it is a question of either/or. For others, the problem is to integrate the two axioms in such a way that the inverse perils of economistic and voluntarist reductionism are avoided.’ Of course, we are ourselves committed to this second option.
In the end, the debate revolved around what the relation was between the economic and non-economic aspects of the social totality, as well as what their relative relevance was in promoting fully-fledged social change. Regarding political subjectivity, the key question was whether the latter was to spring naturally and straightforwardly out of the configuration of the relations of production, or whether, on the contrary, non-economic aspects themselves played a constitutive role regarding political self-consciousness. We follow Resnick and Wolff (1987: 40) in situating Engels as the initiator of the ‘middle ground’ position, in the sense of acknowledging ‘that the debate touched something of great importance, yet also [accepting] it in its unresolved form’. Despite Engels being mostly responsible for the simplified versions of Marxism later to be constituted as orthodoxy (see Engels 1978), a partial theoretical restatement took place in some private correspondence at the end of his life. Some singularly relevant fragments are quoted below:
According to the materialistic conception of history, the production and reproduction of real life constitutes in the last instance the determining factor of history. Neither Marx nor I ever maintained more. Now when someone comes along and distorts this to mean that the economic factor is the sole determining factor, he is converting the former proposition into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis but the various factors of the superstructure […] all these exercise an influence upon the course of historical struggles, and in many cases determine for the most part their form. […] [H]istory is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus, there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant – the historical event. […] Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction.
(Engels 1890b)
Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all these react upon one another and also upon the economic base. It is not that the economic position is the cause and alone active, while everything else only has a passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of the economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself.
(Engels 1894)
If therefore Barth supposes that we deny any and every reaction of the political, etc., reflexes of the economic movement upon the movement itself, he is simply tilting at windmills. […] What these gentlemen all lack is dialectic. They never see anything but here cause and there effect. That this is a hollow abstraction, that such metaphysical polar opposites only exist in the real world during crises, while the whole vast process proceeds in the form of interaction (though of very unequal forces, the economic movement being by far the strongest, most elemental and most decisive) and that here everything is relative and nothing is absolute – this they never begin to see. Hegel has never existed for them.
(Engels 1890a)
Engels’s comments on the debate between economic determinism and social pluralism are relevant for he acknowledged the relevance of the debate itself while refusing to lean towards any of the sides. Moreover, most of the issues that are to articulate successive positions and reformulations of the debate later on are already present in these fragments, namely, the ultimate meaning of the assertion that the economic is determinant ‘in the last instance’; the nature of the relative influence of superstructural elements upon the social whole; the political/partisan nature of all knowledge, and hence the extent to which extra-theoretical circumstances came to determine which side of the debate was to be emphasized; the nature of causality in the social world (e.g. whether the effects reverted back upon the causes, how multi-causality was to be understood); how to delimit a domain of necessity as separated from that of contingency; the specific theoretical status of the dialectic, and hence the nature of Marx’s relation to Hegel; or the existence of dichotomizing tendencies within the social and whether those become exacerbated in times of systemic crises. Taking Engels’s inconclusive commentaries as a starting point, the debate between economic determinism and social pluralism reached a culmination in the work of French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, who took the ‘middle ground’ position to its ultimate, most refined (and, to some, untenable) consequences.
The Althusserian landmark
The debate over the relation existing between economic and non-economic elements of the social totality reached a culmination, we contend, in the works of Althusser. Besides the numerous criticisms he received, the various intra-theoretical problems present in his works, and the utter oblivion into which his figure has unfortunately fallen, some aspects he dealt with nonetheless remain of utmost relevance to contemporary social theory.3
Althusser’s intervention, simultaneously theoretical and political, emerged as a response to the two most significant variants of Marxism within the intellectual landscape of the early 1960s, namely, ‘economism’ and ‘humanism’. On the one hand, under the banner of ‘economism’, Althusser referred to the ossified doctrine that, first in the hands of the II International’s leading theorists, then through its Stalinist reformulation, was converted into a Marxist catechism during the early Cold War years. This doctrine emphasized a sort of technological determinism where the development of the productive forces, and their intermittent clashes with existing relations of production, stood as the latent driving force of any and every historical course of development. As summarized by Elliot (2006: 129): ‘Abstract, reductionist and teleological, economism is a schema in which the economy (and its contradictions) is the pantheistic demiurge of history and individual societies are only variations (“backward” or “advanced”) on a universal model’. This evolutionary and determinist scheme of historical transformation had as its inexorable corollary the inevitable supersession of capitalism by communism as a result of the self-unfolding of the former’s own internal dynamics. The key consequence of this fatalist scheme was ...
