Poster, Mark - Althusser On History Without Man PDF

Althusser on History without Man
Author(s): Mark Poster

Source: Political Theory, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Nov., 1974), pp. 393-409
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ALTHUSSER ON
HISTORY WITHOUT MAN
MARK POSTER
University of California (Irvine)
71 I
[ HE SOCIAL THOUGHT of Louis Althusser1 began as a direct

attack against Marxist humanists.2 Most closely identified in France with
the writings of Henri Lefebvre, Roger Garaudy, and Maximilien Rubel,
Marxist humanism emphasized the active and creative role of men and
women in the shaping of history. For too long, the humanists argued,
Marxism has been identified with a determinism that limited the role of
human beings in history to one of passivity, and with an economism that
restricted the understanding of human affairs to the sphere of work
relations. Not only must Marxism be understood as a doctrine of human
freedom, humanists contended, but the cultural, intellectual, and political
sides of social reality must be given their proper importance. To prove
their case, the humanists referred to Marx's 1844 Manuscripts citing
examples of Marx's concern with the full development of all human
capacities through the overcoming of alienation at every level of social
reality. Thus the Marxist argument against the political economists was not
that capitalism impoverished the workers through exploitation, but that in
every area of everyday life it inhibited, distorted, oppressed-in short,
alienated-the powers of human beings to determine their own lives.
POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 2 No. 4, November 1974

? 1974 Sage Publications, Inc.
[393]
[394] POLITICAL THEORY / NOVEMBER 1974
To Althusser, on the contrary, Marxism was not a moralizing doctrine

of freedom, but a scientific enterprise, and autonomous theoretical
practice. Borrowing aspects of Gaston Bachelard's concept of an epistemo-
logical break,3 he claimed that in Capital Marx established historical
materialism as a science but that he did not conceptualize the epistemo-
logical novelty of his advance. This was the "absence" in Marx's text that
Althusser's reading would discover. Bachelard, along with Koyre, Cavaill6s,
and Canguilhem, working in the field of the history and theory of science,
defined the theoretical novelty of natural science not through its
experimental method or its empiricism, but through the manner in whic
it constituted the object of its knowledge. Althusser applauded the
rationalism of this definition of science, for it underscored the importance
of purely theoretical activity, without, however, severing the connection
between theory and society. He was content with a rather loose
specification of science as a form of theoretical practice that broke sharply
with previous theories while revealing their ideological aspects. The great
advances of the human mind were reduced by Althusser to three: the
Greeks in mathematics; Galileo in physics; Marx in history. Many of the
past confusions within Marxist theory could only be clarified, he
maintained, when its scientific stature was presented as a theoretical as
well as a political advance.4
His new Marxist epistemology opposed what he termed "empiricism,"
especially in its historicist variant. The vital distinction, obscured by
empiricism, between the object of thought and the real object had to be
guarded scrupulously. Ideas did not comingle with the objects they sought
to represent. Marxist science had to strain to generate concepts (knowl-
edge-objects) that enabled society and history to be known. Althusser's
thought was strongly neo-Kantian here: concepts actively created by
thinkers were preconditions for the knowledge of any experience. The
strength of this scientific Marxism for Althusser was that, at the moment
of the production of concepts, the scientist was disinterested-beyond all
attachment to or interest in the objects of the social world. Ideologies to
him were those theories that failed to observe this distinction.
Hence, both empiricism and humanism were ideologies, since the
former conflated theoretical objects with real objects and the latter erased
the distinction between theory and practice. For Althusser, Hegel, the
young Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci, and Sartre were all guilty of some form of
ideology.5 In the recent French debate between Stalinists and Marxist
humanists, Althusser found both camps in error. Neither could account
theoretically for the crucial difference between the political economy of
Poster / ALTHUSSER ON HISTORY WITHOUT MAN [3951
the bourgeoisie and the socialism of the proletariat. Marxist epistemology

had floundered on the problem of accounting for its own thought as a
theory that was qualitatively distinct from past ideologies. In the view of
Stalinists, theory merely "reflected" the economic position of the thinker,
rendering all theories equally ideological, since truth was always reduced
to the social interests of the theorist. But the humanists, to Althusser, did
not overcome this difficulty. Lukacs, for example, replied to the reflex
theory of knowledge that the truth value of Marxism derived from the
unique position of the proletariat in society through which it alone could
grasp the totality. The proletariat's knowledge was therefore universal, as
distinct from the particular knowledge of the bourgeoisie. Yet, to
Althusser, Lukacs' position was just as ideological as his opponent's since
thought was still dependent on social interests. Hence, Lukacs was a
historicist more concerned with the coming into being of a new society
than with establishing a scientific social theory. To Althusser, the
structuralist, the criterion of ideology was clear: "Indeed, it is a peculiari
of every ideological conception . . . that it is governed by 'interests'
beyond the necessity of knowledge alone."6 Religious, ethical, and
political interests had to be abandoned if thought was to become
scientific. Ideologies merely expressed the relation of the "lived experience
of men to their world" and were without scientific value. Althusser's
dangerous conclusion was that human interests and scientific interests
were completely separate and perhaps opposed. Logically, his revised
philosophy of Marxism had to be totally divorced from any leaning toward
socialism itself. Science could have nothing to do with revolutionary
action.
It is apparent that Althusser's definition of ideology was in some ways
in contradiction with Marx's. For Marx, ideology was a false representa-
tion of man and the world, because it took the given situation as natural,
dehistoricizing, and thereby mystifying the present social formation. In
relation to society, ideologies were part of the superstructure, serving to
reinforce the substructure. Ideologies were theories that legitimated
economic and social relations and hence were weapons of class rule. Marx
did not criticize theories as ideological because they fostered certain
human interests, but because they solidified class society. The theory of
the proletariat de-legitimated existing class rule, and hence was different
from ideology. This difference, to Althusser, was not enough to establish
Marxism as a science. What made Marxism a science to him was not that it
led to revolution but that it did not conceptualize society from the point
of view or from the situated presence of any of its members. Thle
[3961 POLITICAL THEORY / NOVEMBER 1974
theoretical advance of Marx came from the purely theoretical production

of concepts that revealed the hidden structure of capitalism. Althusser
presented, as Marx had failed to do, a theory that showed why Marxism
was a science on purely theoretical grounds.
To the Marxist humanists, however, Marx was able to advance his
theory of capitalism only on his prior commitment to the working class.
Once he took the point of view of the working class, Marx was able to
theorize the social formation without the errors of ideology. The
humanists argued that the 1844 Manuscripts7 proved that Marx advanced
toward socialism only through an anthropological conception of man's
reappropriation of his powers that were alienated under capitalism. None
of Marx's later works was intelligible except through this early commit-
ment. From this point of view, Althusser's distinction between science and
ideology threw out the baby with the bath water: in order to defend the
autonomous power of theory, the vital link between theory and practice
was cut. Nevertheless, the great attraction of Althusser's writings stemmed
from his effort to develop a Marxist theory of knowledge and to treat
Marxism as a superior system of thought on the grounds of its truth value
alone. Before carrying our analysis of Althusser further, we must look at
the structuralist reading of Capital.
II
In the collective work, Reading Capital, Althusserian structuralism

presented an attitude of scientific indifference toward its object. Due to
the peculiar mode of presence of the social object, it could only be known
through a scientific attitude. For example, in Reading Capital, Ranciere8
argued that Marx's analysis of the commodity switched from an
anthropological method that grasped it as created by the labor subject, to
a structuralist method that grasped it as an illusory appearance that
concealed its structure. Ranciere quoted Marx: "Value does not carry
what it is written on its forehead."9 Value, the sensuous activity of t
laborer that was embodied in the commodity, was absent in the
appearance of the commodity in the marketplace. Hence, if we view the
commodity from the worker's perspective and interest, we would fail to
attain any knowledge of its structure. Only if we detach the commodity
from any "constitutive subject" can we overcome systematic "misrecog-
nition." Therefore, scientific Marxism had to be limited to Marx's mature
writings where Feuerbachian anthropology and Hegelian historicism were
allegedly eliminated.
In capitalist society, labor was "represented" in the commodity as

value, except that this value was not manifest in the commodity
phenomenon. The real "cause" of the existence of the commodity on the
market was absent in its appearance. It was systematically hidden by the
structural processes of circulation. No knowledge could be gained from a
phenomenology of the worker, the industrialist, or the merchant because
they viewed the commodity from the perspective of their own interests.
Since we were looking for an "absent cause" or a "hidden structure," we
had to adopt, as Marx did, scientific structuralism. Here is Ranciere
sounding very much like Levi-Strauss and Foucault:
We are no longer concerned with a text calling for a reading which will give its
underlying meaning, but with a hieroglyph which has to be deciphered. This
deciphering is the work of science. The structure which excludes the
possibility of critical reading is the structure which opens the dimension of
science. 10
Ranciere's decipherment rendered the structure of the economy intelli-

gible not in its inertness but in its articulated complexity. Against the
denigration of unconscious structure by humanists, who viewed it as mere
mechanism, the structuralist revealed its opaqueness to the social subject
and lucidly exposed the degree to which it was impossible for the subject
to transform the structure. Subject and structure were systematically and
radically out of phase.
Further achievements of structuralist Marxism"1 came in works
devoted to specific structures, like Nicos Poulantzas' Pouvoir politique et
classes sociales (1971) and Althusser's study of ideology.' 2 In the latter
work, Althusser went so far as to abandon Marx's hallowed distinction
between base and superstructure. The state, traditionally viewed as a
segment of the superstructure, maintained an ideological apparatus, in
addition to its coercive power and its bureaucracy, which was, for
Althusser, central to the socialization of workers. For Marx, ideologies
were mere illusions; but for Althusser, ideologies with a force and a history
of their own,13 were a systematic element of every society and would
have to be combatted independently, in the same way that the bourgeoisie
had fought the Church. These ideological state apparatuses, functioning in
such diverse locations as the Church, the family, the schools, and the
media, were a central target for the class struggle and for political
activity.' Thus, Althusser offered a theoretically more sophisticated
Marxism that could analyze various segments of society without reducing
them all to the economy. The economy was no longer a "base" which
determined everything and upon which everything rested. However, his

complex analysis of ideological apparatuses came only after May 1968,
when the action of the students against the University-an action that
Althusser and the CP opposed-revealed its conservative functions. Also,
the "scientific" epistemology that made this knowledge possible served to
cut it off from effective praxis. Marx's injunctions against merely
interpreting the world came back to the structuralists as the "absent
cause" of their own theory.
Structural Marxism legitimately grasped the structure-in-itself, more
precisely, structure-for-science; but the structures, in their absence, have a
level of existence for-their-bearers, for the people who inhabit them. Part
of the structure of the structure is certainly its existence for the subject.
These subjects constitute the structures, although not fully consciously
since they are also constituted by the structures. The unconsciousness of
structures could be known from the subject's side through subjectivist
categories like alienation. To save structuralism from reifying the concept
of structure it seemed that it would have to combine with some form of
humanism and then situate the observer in his world. Althusser's original
escape from ideology into science is best viewed as provisory, as a
temporary procedure for the constitution of the scientific subject, valid
for limited kinds of study. In the end, the scientific subject must erase his
own bracketing, must rebridge his own epistemological coupure, and must
return from withdrawal into the full daylight of his subjectivity,
acknowledging that the place of return is not a heaven of absolute
transparency any more than is the place of science. One might say that the
controversy over structuralism solidified for the French the acceptance of
the final lack of a Hegelian absolute subject, forcing the recognition of a
duality or even a multiplicity of partial subjects-scientific and humanist-
whose unity could be found, if at all, only in action. Such a decentered,
multiple subject was the vision of Nietzsche: the death of God must
proceed through the dissolution of Man (God's object) to arrive at the
birth of men and women.
III
After providing Dialetical Materialism with an epistemology, Althusser

turned to the problem of Historical Materialism. This topic may best be
treated through three interrelated issues: (1) the division of Marx's texts
into the Hegelian and the scientific, (2) the structuralist definition of the
Poster / ALTHUSSER ON HISTORY WITHOUT MAN [399]
concepts of totality and contradiction, and (3) the structuralist concep

history.
Althusser's wrath fell upon those who relied upon the 1844 Manusc
to present a Hegelian Marxism burdened with humanism, historicism,
anthropologism, and empiricism. Against all evidence to the contrary,' 5
Althusser maintained that there was a "break" in Marx's thought in which
Marx totally rejected his youthful concern with Man and located a new
object for knowledge-i.e., the means of production. With this "immense
theoretical revolution," Marx founded the science of history. Logically, all
of Marx's writings before the rupture, which occurred according to
Althusser in 1845 and was fully developed after 1857, were fruitless.1 6
Yet the persistence of Marx's early concerns, with the concept of
alienation for example, into the Grundrisse of 1857-1858 and even into
Capital, eventually compelled Althusser to retract his absolute division and
restrict the "true" Marx even further to The Gotha Program and to the
obscure Marginal Notes on Wagner:
When Capital Volume One appeared (1867), traces of the Hegelian influence
still remained. Only later did they disappear completely: the Critique of the
Gotha Program (1875) as well as the Marginal Notes on Wagner's 'Lehrbuch
der politischen Okonomie' (1882) are totally and definitely exempt from any
trace of Hegelian influence. 1 7
One anti-Althusserian with surmised that Marx must have remained young
almost until the end of his life. More recently, Althusser partially lifted his
ban on Hegel, admitting that Marx owed something of a debt to Hegel's
dialectic even allowing for much alteration on Marx's part.1 8
Pour Marx is the place where Althusser spit out his polemic against the
humanists' view that Marxism is above all a doctrine about human
alienation and a method for ending it. The humanist reading of Marx had
achieved phenomenal success in France since the late 1940s, converting
the vast majority of intellectuals to some form of adherence to Marxism,
or at least dissolving the Anglo-American view of it as determinist and
totalitarian. Grossly simplified, French intellectuals learned from the 1844
Manuscripts that Marx was more interested in restoring man's full powers
than in arguing for economic determinism. The popularity of this view,
which was infiltrating the CP itself, was, to Althusser, a dangerous form of
moralism that obscured the real theoretical achievement of Marx in
penetrating the deep structures of capitalism. Like the other structuralists,
Althusser was opposed to any view that appealed directly to human
interests, which the concept of alienation certainly does. Along with
Levi-Strauss and Foucault, Althusser damned all doctrines, from Descartes

onward, that began with the human subject and promised self-improve-
ment. Hence, all of Marx's writings before the German Ideology of 1845
were really pre-Marxist. Marx's concept of alienation was dependent on his
totally pre-scientific definition of man as "species-being" or free, rational
agent.
There was clearly, as Althusser maintained, a change in problematics in
Marx's writings when he studied capitalism closely as a system. Yet this
absolute rejection of certain texts seems more tendentious than realistic. It
would certainly be more accurate to say that the young Marx comple-
mented his early dialectic of alienation with a later structuralist analysis,
without being able to resolve the differences between the two method-
ologies. Allowing for opposite tendencies in the texts to emerge without
forcing a false unity on them is actually more in keeping with structuralist
principles of interpretation than Althusser's dogmatic bifurcation.
A more serious contribution came with Althusser's critique of the
Hegelian concepts of totality and contradiction which the humanists
maintained were taken over by Marx. Before Hegel, social causation was
seen mechanically, with isolated elements at one point in society affecting
isolated elements at another point. Dissatisfied with this, Hegel accounted
for the effects of the totality on each element, but he did so, Althusser
warned, by reducing the totality to an essence that was "expressed" at
every level,' 9 as in the Philosophy of History, where the World Spirit
permeated whole civilizations. Marx, Althusser claimed, rejected Hegel's
notion of the totality as Idea in favor of a new concept of structure in
which the priority of the totality over the elements was kept, and the
relative autonomy of each level was not overlooked.20
Hegel's concept of contradiction was in similar need of revision, and
Marx accomplished this not by an "inversion" of the dialectic, as was
popularly thought, but by a rupture with it. In Althusser's view, Hegel's
dialectic accounted for change through a process of negation or contra-
diction which was flawed by teleology. The structure of movement itself
predetermined the final result,2 1 and the structure of movement was the
Idea. This left Hegel with an Idealist notion of causation, whereas for Marx
causation was fixed within structures as their interiority. Effect and cause
were not distinct, as for the mechanists, but inseparable aspects of the
presence of structures. In Althusser's view of Marx,
the effects are not outside the structure, are not a pre-existing object, element
or space in which the structure arrives to imprint its mark: on the
contrary. . . the whole existence of the structure consists of its effects, in

short ... the structure, which is merely a specific combination of its peculiar
elements, is nothing outside its effects.22
Following closely the concept of structure in Levi-Strauss, Althusser

demonstrated that a contradiction within a structure could not be located
exclusively at one level-for instance, the economic-but that it was
compounded by contradictions specific to every other, interrelated level of
the structure and was hence "overdetermined." Contradictions, in other
words, could not be reduced to any singular economic cause. A student of
Lacan, Althusser was borrowing the Freudian concept of overdetermi-
nation in which a neurotic symptom cannot be traced back to a single or
original trauma but is compounded by many levels and stages of psychic
development. At a more general level, one could say that the concept of
overdetermination means that human phenomena are not unequivocal,
that they are always laden with multiple meanings.
To Althusser, Levi-Strauss' concept of structure was finally inadequate
because it regarded each level as equal in force, whereas Marxists had to
account for the dominance of the economy. For this purpose, Althusser
spun out a distinction between "the determination in the last instance" of
the economy and "the dominant role" of any level at a given time. This
distinction was meant to account for the apparent dominance of kinship in
primitive society and of politics in feudal Europe while maintaining the
ultimate preeminence of the economy. In order to reproduce itself as a
structure, feudalism had to use political means to ensure economic
activity. In feudal society, politics was therefore visibly the dominant
structure. Yet the dominant role of politics was only possible because, in
the final analysis, work had to be done.23 The economic level was thus the
"absence cause" of the dominant role of politics; put differently, the
structural effect of the economy was present through its absence.
By redefining the nature of contradiction and totality, Althusser
transformed the dialectical method into a structural method. All that was
preserved of dialectics was the primacy of the whole over the parts and a
focus on the relations rather than the isolation of the parts. Gone from the
Hegelian dialectic was the intelligibility of the signified and the role of
men in the process of negation. Structures were now totally objective and
men were merely their "bearers" (in Marx, Trager).24 The "ahumanity" of
structures defied bourgeois common sense in which, for example, an
individual pursued money and labored to make and to spend it. If we look
at the structure as a whole to define its rules of operation, money actually
used man to maintain itself. Human intentions, in this case self-interest,

were present but structurally of secondary importance. Money operated as
a system in expansion or contraction through well-defined rules that were
obscure from the perspective of a person in search of gain. Althusser's
objectivist concept of men as bearers of structures, which he claimed to
have found in his reading of Capital, rendered the structures intelligible
but deemphasized the role of men in changing them. As a total theory of
society, structural Marxism would have to be able to account for history
without resorting to human agents.
IV
We are now in a position to discuss Althusser's concept of history.

Alone among the structuralists, Althusser regarded history as a major
aspect of social theory. For Levi-Strauss, history was a form of mythic
thinking by which the historian converted the past into a line of succession
that made for a false continuity.25 In Foucault, we find a succession of
epistemes but no explanation for the change from one to the next.26 As a
Marxist, Althusser was in no position to suppress or minimize the
question. Diachronics would have to be given as much attention as
synchronics.
The structuralists were equally opposed to what they termed historicism,
or what we know as the dominant forms of historical writing. The manner
in which the historian constituted the object of his field was not, for them,
scientific. Historical researchers consider man as an active subject,
effecting reality through projects that have meaning even though they can
lead to unintended results.27 Denying this assumption, Althusser under-
lined Marx's achievement as the understanding of capitalism as "processes
without subjects."28 Scientific history dealt with structures alone; one
could no longer view change as a continuous succession of human acts, as
linear and homogeneous. In its present evolutionist form, history
systematically overcentered the social field by locating meaning in the
subject as an "absolute reference."29
By shifting the locus of intelligibility from individuals to subject-less
structures, Althusser asks the historian to concentrate on relationships.
Like Levi-Strauss, Foucault, and Lacan, he is arguing that individuals are
lost in a fog of ideology and cannot correctly perceive social reality or
serve as a point of reference to it. Cartesian man, who is a captain of his
soul, a maker of his world and a conqueror of nature, is thus laid to rest.
Poster / ALTHUSSER ON HISTORY WITHOUT MAN [403]
When the historian labors to depict the continuity between the past and
the present by narrating the drama of human ations, he is, in Althusser's
eyes, merely invoking an old Cartesian myth. Althusser is not merely
condemning traditional narrative history to the benefit of the new
sociological-quantitative history. Even social historians like Marc Bloch
and the Annales school, when measuring long-term economic or social
changes, believe they are measuring human decisions or their residues,
however minutely each decision may affect the outcome of events. For the
structuralist, the object of history is neither the interiority of individual
acts nor the externality of collective behavior. What is measured is rather a
system of relationships in static and dynamic articulation. Strictly
speaking, there are thus no events, only structural happenings.
For their own concept of history, the structuralists formalized what
they regarded as Marx's achievement in Capital. Taking over for Althusser,
Balibar, a disciple and collaborator of Althusser's, was left with the
Herculean task of presenting Marx's structural history. In Reading Capital,
Balibar asserted that Marx's Capital produced a table of invariant elements
in the means of production, thereby avoiding historicism. In this
"combination," there were three constituents (workers, means of produc-
tion, and non-laboring appropriators) and two rules of combination
(property connection and appropriation connection).30 The combination
accounted for the economic structure of any society. It differed somewhat
from the equally atemporal "combinatory" of Levi-Strauss which indi-
cated that "the places of the factors and their relations change, but not
their nature."3 1 We will leave aside the question of the universality of
Balibar's concept of combination. What is important is that Balibar
defined history as changes in the combination. Structural change consisted
not in the dissolution of one structure and the constitution ex nihilo of a
new one, but in "the transformation of one structure into another."32
The rules of transformation followed Freud's concept of the process of
displacement.3 3
In the formation of capitalism, for example, structural change meant a
"displacement" within the means of production. Both the "object of
labor" (the product) and the "means of labor" (the tools) were
"separated" from the laborer in two ways: in the property relation, the
worker owned nothing; in the appropriation relation, the worker became
incapable of setting the means of production in motion. In short, he had
lost the skills to make the product. In each of the relations of the worker
to the means of production, there was a homology of separation,34 one
that was unique to capitalism. Capitalism thus began with the introduction
of the "machine-tool," since from that point on all structures were

adjusted to the new combination: the worker was separated both from the
object of labor and from the means of labor. Not at all linear, the process
occurred without a subject, without anyone willing or intending the new
combination, out of the structural contradictions of the previous
transitional form (manufacturing). The recombination of the same
elements was a displacement.35 More precisely, within the structure of the
means of production, under the manufacturing or handicraft system, there
was a unity between the tools and the worker whereas under fully
developed capitalism what unity there was shifted to the relation between
the object of labor and the means of labor.36 In plain language, under
industrial capitalism, the tool was structured to produce the product;
under earlier methods, the tool was structured to the human body.
Capitalism maximized the separation of the worker and the means of
production not simply by private ownership but also by the structure of
the means of production which maximized the output of the machine
disregarding the structure of the body (or the mind) of the worker.
Contradiction plagued the new structure since its effects, in the process of
daily reproduction, were both stabilizing and disruptive. The more
absolute the separation between the worker and the means of production,
the more perfect became the structure and the closer it came to
dissolution.
In this way, structural history traced displacements in the combination
without reference to human action. In detail, the process of change went
as follows:3 7 Structures were formed out of bits of existing structures.
The dissolution of a structure, like feudalism, took place without
apocalyptic drama: the structure was simply less able to integrate its
subordinate levels, which floated, so to speak, in the social field, gradually
combining with other loose elements through a process of bricolage. This
bricolage, which had no bricoleur, please note,38 assembled sections from
the junk heap of the previous structure, like a tinkerer in a workshop filled
with used remnants. Gradually but discontinuously, a new structure
emerged containing contradictions or imperfections since it was not
designed ahead of time by some great architect, using appropriate
materials and proceeding systematically, but rather through fits and starts,
with materials suited for a different social machine. To Balibar, Marx had
traced this process in what he called the primitive accumulation of capital.
Hence, the science of history could demonstrate apodictically that
capitalism could not endure forever; it was not a frictionless machine.
Moreover, its contradictions led to a combination in which the means of
production would be socialized, uniting the separated workers with their

tools and their products. Yet if the claim for universality of the elements
that the Althusserians discovered in Capital is taken seriously, it is hard to
see what would become of the appropriators, the third element, under
socialism. The Althusserians seem to display a certain esprit de geometrie,
delighting in the elegance of their combination, which historians with a
rather different mentality are not likely to favor.
In Althusser's concept of history, as we have seen, social change came

about regardless of the deliberate action of human groups. And so cosmic
fatalism crept into his anti-humanism: all action was futile both because
structures moved autonomously and because praxis was always inspired by
ideological interests which distorted it. One critic, Conilh, captured
Althusser's vision by relating it to social change in France since 1940:
No doubt we can measure here the contemporary malaise, our malaise. The
existential anguish born from the war, in the night of the occupation, is no
longer apparent; it is muted by a huge stupor before the fulness of our
knowledge and our unlimited powers. This knowledge surrounds us complete-
ly, it penetrates us to our deepest intimacy. It is our mode of being and doing,
our ineluctible presence in the world. Nothing can escape it and declamations
against science are merely laughable hypocrisy.39
In the mad, chaotic human world, praxis was always infiltrated by

ideology since men always took the point of view of the human species or
some part of it; they were always practicing humanists, measuring the
world by their own images and desires. Yet Althusser's science showed
that social change was a matter of structures in complex systems of
autonomy and interdependence beyond human will. In this manner, he
avoided any hint of anthropology, the various projections of man's
self-image. Still, even Althusser was caught in the ontological web of being
human and his discourse projected an "interest" inherent in all discourse,
one that was not purely scientific. One could claim that discourse was a
system like all others and therefore that it did not depend on subjects who
were only its bearers, as in Levi-Strauss' position where myths were
thought through men. This resort was not open to Althusser because his
concept of the epistemological break maintained that scientific discourse,
unlike ideology, did not depend upon unconscious infrastructures. 40
Science was not decentered and therefore it did require subjects-creators

like Karl Marx who deliberately produced knowledge. If science rested on
subjects, it reintroduced an element of anthropology and with it the
"ideological" imperative to read Althusser. Even structuralist history, at
some point, was compelled to utter the word man.
From an existentialist viewpoint, Althusser's discourse was charac-
terized by a refusal to accept the risk of finitude,4 l that is, the
dependence of science on action, on action by the scientist. The existential
commitments of the scientist were "structurally" an element of his
theoretical practice. Twentieth-century philosophy of science had proved
at least that science must accept its own incompleteness. Anthropology
could not be totally eliminated; human interests, as Habermas argued in
Knowledge and Human Interests, were not separable from scientific ones.
For philosophers of history and practicing historians Althusser has
raised some significant questions, most notably, what is the object of
historical inquiry? This is a question that is too often taken for granted.
The interesting consequence of Althusser's investigation is that historians
must regard deep structures as their object because only in this way can
they attain scientific knowledge. If they look for the traces of man,
historians will become bogged down in the mire of ideology, as they have
in the past.
Althusser's shift in emphasis toward objective structures has led many
critics to regard him as a positivist. What is meant by positivism in this
context is the tendency in social science to isolate social phenomena in
such a way that they appear to be static givens and to elevate the scientific
method into a complete and absolute foundation for knowledge. Yet this
criticism misses its mark. Althusser avoids positivism, I would argue,
because he does not leave the choice of historical subject either to the
accident of facts not previously uncovered or to a fetish of available
methodology (usually mathematics). Then, too, his peculiar Marxism, with
the concept of structure-in-dominance does not appear to fit easily with
the pluralism of positivists. In any case, Althusser's investigations seem to
avoid both mechanical, economic determinism and the moralism of many
Marxist humanists. In the Anglo-American world, Althusser has not won
many converts even among Marxists. Nevertheless, he has done for social
structure what Foucault did for the episteme: he has provided a method to
approach a level of historical reality which had gone almost totally
unnoticed.
The impact of Althusser's structuralism in France turned attention
away from Marxist humanism. Students of Marxism flocked to Althusser,
Pbster / ALTHUSSER ON HISTORY WITHOUT MAN [407]
somehow finding Maoist inspiration in his teaching. A band of Althusser's

students, known as the Cercle d'ulm, set themselves up within the UEC,
the CP student organization, in 1964. After the Party sided with Garaudy
and against Althusser, the young structuralist Marxists spoke out openly
against the Party and by 1966 they were excluded from it. By holding
back his own criticisms, Althusser was able to avoid the censure of the
Party while it enjoyed the prestige of his intellectual success. Basking in
Althusser's theoretical sunshine, the Communist Party found itself in the
midst of an intellectual renewal. Things were going so well that Tel Quel,
an avant-garde literary journal, associated itself with the CP in the late
1960s, aping the surrealists of the I920s and 1930s and the existentialists
of the 1940s and 1950s, as if some occult spirit drew litterateurs to the
politics of the working man. The theoretical organs of the CP hummed
with excitement, and sales steadily rose after 1968. Whether the increased
subscriptions to La Pens&e and La Nouvelle critique were due to Althusser,
as has been suggested,42 or to the events of May 1968, or even to the
growing independence of the CP from Moscow, was not at all clear.
NOTES
1. Althusser's major works are all available in English: For Marx transl. Ben
Brewster (New York, 1970); Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital,
transl. Ben Brewster from 1968 edition (London, 1970). The contribution by
Ranciere to the original edition has been translated in Theoretical Practice; those of
Macherey and Establet have not been translated. Louis Althusser, Lenin and
Philosophy and Other Essays, transl. Ben Brewster (London, 1971): Louis Althusser,
Politics and History: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, transl. Ben Brewster
(London, 1972).
2. For the controversy over Althusser, cf.: attacks by CP theorists on early
articles: Guy Besse, "Deux questions sur un article de Louis Althusser," La Pensee,
107 (February, 1963) 52-62; Roger Garaudy, "Les Manuscrits de 1844," La Pensee,
107 (February, 1963); Gilbert Mury, "Materialisme et hyperempiricisme," La Pensee,
108 (April, 1963) 38-51. In one issue, Les Temps modernes printed a favorable
review by Nicos Poulantzas, "Vers une theorie marxiste," 21:240 (May, 1966)
1952-1982; followed by an attack, Robert Paris, "En dega du marxisme,"
1983-2002; concluded by a commentary by Jean Pouillon, "Du cote de chez Marx,"
2003-2012. Two excellent articles then appeared, one in favor, Alain Badiou of the
Cercle d'epistemologie, "Le (Re) commencement du materialisme dialectique,"
Critique, 240 (May, 1967) 438467; and one against, Andre Glucksmann, "Un
structuralisme ventriloque," Les Temps modernes, 22:250 (March, 1967) transl. in
New Left Review, 72 (March-April, 1972) 68-92. Aron was hostile in D'une sainte
famille a l'autre (Paris, 1969). A good summary was presented by Jean-Claude
Forquin, "Lecture d'Althusser," Les cahiers du centre d'etudes socialistes (1968)

7-31. A biting review of Lenin and Philosophy appeared by Franqois George, "
Althusser," Les temps modernes, 24:275 (May, 1969) 1921-1962, transl. in Telos, 7
(Spring, 1971) 73-98. Also, Emile Bottigelli, the translator of Marx, "En lisant
Althusser," in Structuralisme et marxisme (Paris, 1970) 39-65.
3. Cf. Dominique Lecourt, L 'epistgmologie historique de G. Bachelard (Paris,
1969) partially transl. in Theoretical Practice, 3-4 (Fall, 1971) 13-24.
4. Althusser, Politics and Historv, 166.
5. Althusser, Reading Capital, 138.
6. Ibid., 141.
7. The debate over Marxist humanism, affecting the political composition of the
Party, raged fiercely in Communist journals. Cahiers du communlisme devoted an
issue to it in May-June, 1966 entitled "Les problemes id6ologiques et culturelles."
Garaudy's forces predominated. La Nouvelle critique contained a continuing debate
on humanism tlhroughout the mid- and late-1960s. Michel Simon's articles,
"Marxisme et humanisme," La Nouvelle critique, 165 (1965) 96-132 and "Progres,
raison, histoire," La Nouvelle critique, 176 (1966) 66-78 represented a tempered
Althusserianism best. One could argue the anti-lhumanist position by calling it a
philisophy of the concept as opposed to the humanist philosophy of the subject. Tlhe
best statement of this positionl was Georges Canguilhem, "Mort de l'homme ou
epuisement du cogito? " Critique, 242 (July, 1967) 599-618, a review of Foucault's
Les mots et les choses.
8. Rancie-re's recent defection from the Althusserian camp does not detract
from the pertinence of his contribution to Lire le Capital.
9. Ranciere, "The Concept of 'Critique' and the 'Critique of Political Econ-
omy,' " Theoretical Practice, 2 (April, 1971) 39.
1 0. Ibid.
11. Even though Althusser refused the title structuralist. he did acknowvledge
debts to L6vi-Strauss, Lacan and Foucault.
12. Transl. in Lenin and Phlilosophy.
13. Ibid., 151.
14. Ibid., 149.
15. Cf. Ernest Mandel, The Formation of the Econiomic Thlought of Karl Marx
(N.Y., 1971) 177.
16. Althusser, ForMarx, 155-160.
17. Althusser, Lenin and Phlilosophy, 90.
18. Althusser, Politics and History, 185.
19. Althusser, Reading Capital, 186-187.
20. Altlhusser, Politics and History, 183.
21. Althusser, Reading Capital, 188 and For Marx, 89-128.
22. Althusser, Reading Capital, 189.
23. Ibid., 179 and Glucksmann, "Un structuralisme ventriloque," 80, 84, 87.
24. Althusser, Reading Capital, 25 2.
25. Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, (Chicago, 1966), "History and Dialectics."
26. Hayden White, "Foucault Decoded," History anid Theory, 7 (1973) 27.
27. Lucien Sebag, Marxisme et structuralisme (Paris, 1964) 128.
28. Althusser, LIenin and Phlilosoph yp, 201.
29. Sebag, Marxismne et structuralisme, 155.
30. Balibar, Readinig Capital, 215, also 177.

31. Ibid., 216.
32. Ibid., 242.
33. Ibid., 243.
34. Ibid., 215.
35. Ibid., 243.
36. Ibid., 242.
37. Badiou, "Le (Re) commencement dui mat6rialisme dialectique," gives an
excellent account of this.
38. Balibar, Reading Capital, 250.
39. Conilh, "Lecture de Althusser," Esprit, 35:360 (May, 1967) 899.
40. Badiou, "Le (Re) commencement du materialisme dialectique," 443.
41. Glucksmann, "Un structuralisme ventriloque."
42. Pradeep Bandyopadhyay, "The Many Faces of French Marxism," Scienice an1d
Society, 36: 2 (Summer, 1972) 145.

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Althusser on History without Man

Author(s): Mark Poster

[ HE SOCIAL THOUGHT of Louis Althusser1 began as a direct

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 2 No. 4, November 1974

To Althusser, on the contrary, Marxism was not a moralizing doctrine

the bourgeoisie and the socialism of the proletariat. Marxist epistemology

theoretical advance of Marx came from the purely theoretical production

In the collective work, Reading Capital, Althusserian structuralism

In capitalist society, labor was "represented" in the commodity as

Ranciere's decipherment rendered the structure of the economy intelli-

determined everything and upon which everything rested. However, his

After providing Dialetical Materialism with an epistemology, Althusser

concepts of totality and contradiction, and (3) the structuralist concep

Levi-Strauss and Foucault, Althusser damned all doctrines, from Descartes

contrary. . . the whole existence of the structure consists of its effects, in

Following closely the concept of structure in Levi-Strauss, Althusser

used man to maintain itself. Human intentions, in this case self-interest,

We are now in a position to discuss Althusser's concept of history.

of the "machine-tool," since from that point on all structures were

production would be socialized, uniting the separated workers with their

In Althusser's concept of history, as we have seen, social change came

In the mad, chaotic human world, praxis was always infiltrated by

Science was not decentered and therefore it did require subjects-creators

somehow finding Maoist inspiration in his teaching. A band of Althusser's

Forquin, "Lecture d'Althusser," Les cahiers du centre d'etudes socialistes (1968)

30. Balibar, Readinig Capital, 215, also 177.

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