Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Louis Althusser

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781583673720
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Politik

No figure among the western Marxist theoreticians has loomed larger in the postwar period than Louis Althusser. A rebel against the Catholic tradition in which he was raised, Althusser studied philosophy and later joined both the faculty of the Ecole normal superieure and the French Communist Party in 1948. Viewed as a "structuralist Marxist," Althusser was as much admired for his independence of intellect as he was for his rigorous defense of Marx. The latter was best illustrated in For Marx (1965), and Reading Capital (1968). These works, along with Lenin and Philosophy (1971) had an enormous influence on the New Left of the 1960s and continues to influence modern Marxist scholarship.

This classic work, which to date has sold more than 30,000 copies, covers the range of Louis Althusser's interests and contributions in philosophy, economics, psychology, aesthetics, and political science.

Marx, in Althusser's view, was subject in his earlier writings to the ruling ideology of his day. Thus for Althusser, the interpretation of Marx involves a repudiation of all efforts to draw from Marx's early writings a view of Marx as a "humanist" and "historicist."

Lenin and Philosophy also contains Althusser's essay on Lenin's study of Hegel; a major essay on the state, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," "Freud and Lacan: A letter on Art in Reply to André Daspre," and "Cremonini, Painter of the Abstract." The book opens with a 1968 interview in which Althusser discusses his personal, political, and intellectual history.

Preface to Capital Volume One

Now, for the first time in the history of French publishing, Capital Volume One is available to a mass audience.

What is Capital?

It is Marx’s greatest work, the one to which he devoted his whole life after 1850, and to which he sacrificed the better part of his personal and family existence in bitter tribulation.

This work is the one by which Marx has to be judged. By it alone, and not by his still idealist ‘Early Works’ (1841–1844); not by still very ambiguous works like The German Ideology,¹ or even the Grundrisse, drafts which have been translated into French under the erroneous title ‘Fondements de le Critique de l’Economie Politique’ (Foundations of the critique of political economy);² not even by the famous Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,³ where Marx defines the ‘dialectic’ of the ‘correspondence and non-correspondence’ between the Productive Forces and the Relations of Production in very ambiguous (because Hegelian) terms.

Capital, a mighty work, contains what is simply one of the three great scientific discoveries of the whole of human history: the discovery of the system of concepts (and therefore of the scientific theory) which opens up to scientific knowledge what can be called the ‘Continent of History’. Before Marx, two ‘continents’ of comparable importance had been ‘opened up’ to scientific knowledge: the Continent of Mathematics, by the Greeks in the fifth century B.C., and the Continent of Physics, by Galileo.

We are still very far from having assessed the extent of this decisive discovery and drawn all the theoretical conclusions from it. In particular, the specialists who work in the domains of the ‘Human Sciences’ and of the Social Sciences (a smaller domain), i.e. economists, historians, sociologists, social psychologists, psychologists, historians of art and literature, of religious and other ideologies—and even linguists and psycho-analysts, all these specialists ought to know that they cannot produce truly scientific knowledges in their specializations unless they recognize the indispensability of the theory Marx founded. For it is, in principle, the theory which ‘opens up’ to scientific knowledge the ‘continent’ in which they work, in which they have so far only produced a few preliminary knowledges (linguistics, psychoanalysis) or a few elements or rudiments of knowledge (the occasional chapter of history, sociology and economics) or illusions pure and simple, illegitimately called knowledges.

Only the militants of the proletarian class struggle have drawn the conclusions from Capital: they have recognized its account of the mechanisms of capitalist exploitation, and grouped themselves in the organizations of the economic class struggle (the trade unions) and of the political class struggle (the Socialist, then Communist Parties), which apply a mass ‘line’ of struggle for the seizure of State Power, a ‘line’ based on ‘the concrete analysis of the concrete situation’ (Lenin) in which they have to fight (this ‘analysis’ being achieved by a correct application of Marx’s scientific concepts to the ‘concrete situation’).

It is paradoxical that highly ‘cultivated’ intellectual specialists have not understood a book which contains the Theory which they need in their ‘disciplines’ and that, inversely, the militants of the Workers’ Movement have understood this same Book, despite its great difficulties. The paradox is easy to explain, and the explanation of it is given word for word by Marx in Capital and by Lenin in his works.⁴

If the workers have ‘understood’ Capital so easily it is because it speaks in scientific terms of the everyday reality with which they are concerned: the exploitation which they suffer because of the capitalist system. That is why Capital so rapidly became the ‘Bible’ of the International Workers’ Movement, as Engels said in 1886. Inversely, the specialists in history, political economy, sociology, psychology, etc., have had and still have such trouble ‘understanding’ Capital because they are subject to the ruling ideology (the ideology of the ruling class) which intervenes directly in their ‘scientific’ practice, falsifying their objects, their theories and their methods. With a few exceptions, they do not suspect, they cannot suspect the extraordinary power and variety of the ideological grip to which they are subject in their ‘practice’ itself. With a few exceptions, they are not in a position to criticize for themselves the illusions in which they live and to whose maintenance they contribute, because they are literally blinded by them. With a few exceptions, they are not in a position to carry out the ideological and theoretical revolution which is necessary if they are to recognize in Marx’s theory the very theory their practice needs in order to become at last scientific.

When we speak of the difficulty of Capital, it is therefore essential to apply a distinction of the greatest importance. Reading Capital in fact presents two types of difficulty, which have nothing to do with each other.

Difficulty No 1, absolutely and massively determinant, is an ideological difficulty, and therefore in the last resort a political difficulty.

Two sorts of readers confront Capital: those who have direct experience of capitalist exploitation (above all the proletarians or wage-laborers in direct production, but also, with nuances according to their place in the production system, the non-proletarian wage-laborers); and those who have no direct experience of capitalist exploitation, but who are, on the contrary, ruled in their practices and consciousness by the ideology of the ruling class, bourgeois ideology. The first have no ideological-political difficulty in understanding Capital since it is a straightforward discussion of their concrete lives. The second have great difficulty in understanding Capital (even if they are very ‘scholarly’, I would go so far as to say, especially if they are very ‘scholarly’), because there is a political incompatibility between the theoretical content of Capital and the ideas they carry in their heads, ideas which they ‘rediscover’ in their practices (because they put them there in the first place). That is why Difficulty No. 1 of Capital is in the last instance a political difficulty.

But Capital presents another difficulty which has absolutely nothing to do with the first: Difficulty No. 2, or the theoretical difficulty.

Faced with this difficulty, the same readers divide into two new groups. Those who are used to theoretical thought (i.e. the real scientists) do not or should not have any difficulty in reading a theoretical book like Capital. Those who are not used to practising works of theory (workers, and many intellectuals who, although they may be ‘cultured’ are not theoretically cultured) must or ought to have great difficulty in reading a book of pure theory like Capital.

As the reader will have noted, I have used conditionals (should not … should …). I have done so in order to stress something even more paradoxical than what I have just discussed: the fact that even individuals without practice in theoretical texts (such as workers) have had less difficulty with Capital than individuals disciplined in the practice of pure theory (such as scientists, or very ‘cultivated’ pseudo-scientists).

This cannot excuse us from saying something about the very special type of difficulty presented by Capital as a work of pure theory, although we must bear in mind the fundamental fact that it is not the theoretical difficulties but the political difficulties which are really determinant in the last instance for every reading of Capital and its first volume.

Everyone knows that without a corresponding scientific theory there can be no scientific practice, i.e. no practice producing new scientific knowledge. All science therefore depends on its own theory. The fact that this theory changes and is progressively complicated and modified with the development of the science in question makes no difference to this.

Now, what is this theory which is indispensable to every science? It is a system of basic scientific concepts. The mere formulation of this simple definition brings out two essential aspects of every scientific theory: (1) the basic concepts, and (2) their system.

These concepts are concepts, i.e. abstract notions. First difficulty of the theory: to get used to the practice of abstraction. This apprenticeship, for it really is an apprenticeship (comparable with the apprenticeship in any other practice, e.g. as a lock-smith), is primarily provided, in our education system, by mathematics and philosophy. Even in the Preface to Capital Volume One, Marx warns us that abstraction is not just the existence of theory, but also the method of his analysis. The experimental sciences have the ‘microscope’, Marxist science has no ‘microscope’: it has to use abstraction to ‘replace’ it.

Beware: scientific abstraction is not at all ‘abstract,’ quite the contrary. E.g., when Marx speaks of the total social capital, no one can ‘touch it with his hands’; when Marx speaks of the ‘total surplus-value’, no one can touch it with his hands or count it: and yet these two abstract concepts designate actually existing realities. What makes abstraction scientific is precisely the fact that it designates a concrete reality which certainly exists but which it is impossible to ‘touch with one’s hands’ or ‘see with one’s eyes’. Every abstract concept therefore provides knowledge of a reality whose existence it reveals: an ‘abstract concept’ then means a formula which is apparently abstract but really terribly concrete, because of the object it designates. This object is terribly concrete in that it is infinitely more concrete, more effective than the objects one can ‘touch with one’s hands’ or ‘see with one’s eyes’—and yet one cannot touch it with one’s hands or see it with one’s eyes. Thus the concept of exchange value, the concept of the total social capital, the concept of socially necessary labor, etc. All this is easy to explain.

The second point: the basic concepts exist in the form of a system, and that is what makes them a theory. A theory is indeed a rigorous system of basic scientific concepts. In a scientific theory, the basic concepts do not exist in any given order, but in a rigorous order. It is therefore necessary to know this order, and to learn the practice of rigour step by step. Rigour (systematic rigour) is not a fantasy, nor is it a formal luxury, but a vital necessity for all science, for every scientific practice. It is what Marx in his ‘Afterword’ calls the rigour of the ‘method of presentation’ of a scientific theory.

Having said this, we have to know what the object of Capital is, in other words, what is the object analysed in Capital Volume One. Marx tells us: it is ‘the capitalist mode of production and the relations of production and exchange corresponding to that mode’. This is itself an abstract object. Indeed, despite appearances, Marx does not analyze any ‘concrete society’, not even England which he mentions constantly in Volume One, but the capitalist mode of production and nothing else. This object is an abstract one: which means that it is terribly real and that it never exists in the pure state, since it only exists in capitalist societies. Simply speaking: in order to be able to analyse these concrete capitalist societies (England, France, Russia, etc.), it is essential to know that they are dominated by that terribly concrete reality, the capitalist mode of production, which is ‘invisible’ (to the naked eye). ‘Invisible,’ i.e. abstract.

Of course, this does not deal with every misunderstanding. We have to be extremely careful to avoid the false difficulties raised by these misunderstandings. For example, we must not imagine that Marx is analysing the concrete situation in England when he discusses it. He only discusses it in order to ‘illustrate’ his (abstract) theory of the capitalist mode of production.

To sum up: there really is a difficulty in reading Capital which is a theoretical difficulty. It lies in the abstract and systematic nature of the basic concepts of the theory or theoretical analysis. It is essential to realize that this is a real difficulty that can only be surmounted by an apprenticeship in scientific abstraction and rigour. It is essential to realize that this apprenticeship is not quickly completed.

Hence a first piece of advice to the reader: always keep closely in mind the idea that Capital is a work of theory, and that its object is the mechanisms of the capitalist mode of production alone.

Hence a second piece of advice to the reader: do not look to Capital either for a book of ‘concrete’ history or for a book of ‘empirical’ political economy, in the sense in which historians and economists understand these terms. Instead, find in it a book of theory analysing the capitalist mode of production. History (concrete history) and economics (empirical economics) have other objects.

Hence a third piece of advice to the reader. When you encounter a difficulty of a theoretical order in your reading, realize the fact and take the necessary steps. Do not hurry, go back carefully and slowly and do not proceed until you have understood. Take note of the fact that an apprenticeship in theory is indispensable if you are to be able to read a theoretical work. Realize that you can learn to walk by walking, on condition that you scrupulously respect the above-mentioned conditions. Realize that you will not learn to walk in theory all at once, suddenly and definitively, but little by little, patiently and humbly. This is the price of success.

Practically, this means that it is impossible to understand Volume One except on condition of re-reading it four or five times in succession, i.e. the time it takes to learn to walk in theory.

The present preface is intended to guide the reader’s first steps in the theory.

But before I turn to that, a word is needed on the audience who are going to read Capital Volume One.

Of whom is this audience likely to be composed?

• Proletarians or wage-earners directly employed in the production of material goods.

• Non-proletarian wage-laborers (from simple white-collar worker to middle and higher executives, engineers and research workers, teachers, etc.).

• Urban and rural artisans.

• Members of the liberal professions.

• Students at school and university.

Among the proletarians or wage earners who will read Capital Volume One, there will naturally be men and women who have obtained a certain ‘idea’ of Marxist theory from the practice of the class struggle in their trade union and political organizations. This idea may be more or less correct, as one passes from the proletarians to the non-proletarian wageworkers: it will not be fundamentally falsified.

Among the other categories who will read Capital Volume One, there will naturally be men and w...