Perry Anderson NLB Arguments Within English MarxismBritish Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Anderson, Petry Arguments Within English Marxism, 1. “Thompson, Edward Palmer L Title 907'.2'024 D1S.Ts! © Perry Anderson, 1980 NLB and Verso Editions, 7 Carlisle Street, London W.1 Photoset in Monophoto Pantin by Red Lion Setters Led, Holborn, London Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Burn Ltd, ‘Trowbridge and Esher ISBN 0 86091 727 4 (paper) ISBN 86091 030 X (cloth) Hx Atle » Ale Contents . Historiography . Agency Marxism . Stalinism . Internationalism . Utopias 22 we wYBDn |. Strategies Bibliography Index 16 59 100 131 157 176 209 214The historian may tend 10 be a bit to0 generous because a historian has to learn to attend and listen to very disparate groups of pesple and iry and understand their value-systems and their conceal in a very committed situation you can’t always afford that hind of generosity. Bu ‘afford it tootitele then you are mpl thehindofectatan position in which you are repeatedly making errors of judgement 4n your relations with other people. We have seen a lot of that recently, Historical consciousness ought to assist one 10 understand ihe possibilities of transformation and the possibili- ties within teople. EDWARD THOMPSON Edward Thompson is our finest socialist: writer today—certainly in England, possibly in Europe. Readers of The Making of the English Working Class, or indeed Whigs and Hunters, will always remember these as major works ofliterature, The wonderful variety of timbre and rhythm commanded by Thompson’s writing at the height of its powers—alter- nately passionate and playful, caustic and delicate, colloquial and decor- ‘cous—has no peer on the Left. Arguably, too, the strictly historical achievement of the series of studies that extends across “he 19th and 18th ‘centuries from William Morris to the rich group of recent essays whose collection is promised in Customs in Common is perhaps the most original product of the corpus of English Marxist historiography to which so many gifted scholars have contributed. Setting aside any other considera- tion, itis rare for any researcher to become equally at home in two such contrasted epochs. Whatever comparative estimate is made in this respect—where doubtless no final judgement is attaincble—two distine- tive characteristics of Thompson’s practice as @ historian stand out. ‘Throughout, his has been the most declared political history of any of his generation. Every major, and nearly every minor, work he has written concludes with an avowed and direct reflection on its lessons for socialists of his own time. William Morris closes with a discussion of ‘moral realism’; The Making of the English Working Class recalls our debt to the ‘liberty tree’ planted by the early English proletariat; Whigs and Hunters ends with a general revaluation of the ‘rule of law’; an essay like “Time, ‘Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’? speculates on the possible synthesis of ‘old and new time-senses’ in a commurist society of the 1, Past and Present, No 38, 1967, pp. 56-972 fature that has surpassed the ‘problem of leisure’. Each of these texts has been in its own way a militant intervention in the present, as well a a pro- fessional recovery of the past. The massive consistency of their direction, from the mid 50s 0 the late 70s, visibly attested in the long Postscript to the new edition of the study of Morris (1977) is profoundly impressive, At the same time, these works of history have also been deliberate and focused contributions to theory: no other Marxist historian has taken such pains to con‘tont and explore, without insimuation or circumlocu- tion, difficult conceptual questions in the pursuit of their research. The definitions of ‘class’ and ‘class consciousness’ in The Making of the English Working Class; the critique of base and superstructure’ through the prism of law in Whigs and Hunters; the reinstatement as disciplined imagination of ‘uiopianism’ in the new edition of William Morris—all these represent theoretical arguments that are not mere enclaves within the respective historical discourses, but form rather their natural culmination and resolution. ‘The claim on our critical respect and gratitude, then, is one of formidable magnitude and complexity. Some appraisal of Thompson’s ‘central ideas and concerns is, however, long overdue. The publication of ‘The Poverty of Theory provides an occasion to begin such an assessment.? Released over a year ago, it has received 2 generally favourable press in England. But at the date of writing, no extended response to it has so far appeared. Given the challenge of the book, this seems like something of an anti-climax. In many ways, I cannot be regarded as the most apposite interlocutor. The Poverty of Theory contains four essays, three already published and one unpublished. The former include the famous critique of views of English society and history developed in New Left Review, entitled ‘The Pecaliarities of the English’, to which I rejoined over a decade ago. The latter is an attack across two hundred pages on the thought of Louis Althusser, and by its scale and novelty inevitably dominates the bock. The appropriate respondent to it would obviously be an Althusserian. However, in the absence for the moment of more indicated candidates, it seems worthwhile at this point to review the theses Thompson sets out in the book-length essay which gives its title—and manifes:0—to the volume. For “The Poverty of Theory—oran Orrery of Errors’ is not only a polemic against Althusser: it is also the 2, London, 1978, a 3 most sustained exposition of Thompson’s own credo, asa historian and as a socialist, that he has given us to date. The purpose of the essay here, then, will be threefold, It will look at Thompson's criticisms of Althusser, and try to determine their justice. Simultanzously, and more importantly, it will seek to elicit some of the cruces of Thompson's substantive work, through the grill of the principles and procedures he recommends in The Poverty of Theory. The treatment of Althusser, starting moderately and ending in a gale of fury, is unconventional in organization. Discussion of it will be facilitated by some regroupment of its themes, for a more compact comment on them. The Poverty of Theory is, in effect, dominated by four main problems: the character of historical inguiry, the role of human agency in history, the nature and fate of Marxism, and the phenomenon of Stalinism, Iwill consider each of these in turn, as they present themselves in Thompson’s criticisms of Althusser and in his own practice asa historian; and in conclusion will try to put Thompson’s work into a comparative context, capable of clarifying in some degree the differences which have arisen between him and New Left Review, a journal he took a central part in creating. Whatever our view of specific arguments in The Poverty of Theory, the enterprise itself must be welcomed, It represents the first full-scale ‘engagement by an English historian with a major philosophical system from the continent, over the terrain of Marxism. A direct encounter between the two different discursive traditions represented by ‘Thompson and Althusser has for some time now been mnuch needed, for the development of historical materialism as a whole‘ It is to ‘Thompson’s credit that he has undertaken the task, initiating a process of exchange that we must hope will eventually be many-sided. 3, References to the lacer will henceforward be ebbceviated ro rr; The Making of the English Working Clase Penguin edition: 1963) to MEWC; Whigs and Hunters (1973) 0 WH William Morrie—Romantic to Revolutionary (1917 re-edition) to WN. 4, See the remarks in Considerations om Western Marsiem, London 1976, pp. 111-112.1 Historiography ‘The opening sections of The Poverty of Theory are addressed to certain general issues of historiography as a discipline. Three distinct problems are explored by Thompson, which can be formulated as follows: (i) wh: isthe particular nature and place of evidence in any historical inquiry? (i ‘what are the appropriate concepts for the understanding of historical pro- ‘cesses? (iil) what is the distinctive object of historical knowledge? In each. case, Thompson evokes and rejects what he takes to be Althusser's answer, and proposes his own solution. He begins his case with the ‘charge that Althusser’s epistemology exhibits 2 radical indifference ‘towards the primary data which make up what it terms Generalities I: no cexpl>nation or attention is ever given to either the character of these data, ‘or their origins—chief among which is ‘experience’, Althusser's cavalier attitude towards empirical facts is confirmed by his account of Generalities 1, or the process of cognition itself, which in effect assumes that any scientific theory can define and produce its own facts by self validating protocols, without recourse to external appeals. Thompson argues that this is an abusive extension of the very limited and excep- tional procedures of mathematics or logic, that is wholly illegitimate if applied to either the social or physical sciences, where the controls of evidence are always central. The result is that no genuine new knowledge can emerge in Althusser's Generalities I (its ostensible site), since Generalities 11 has already pre-packaged the data of Generalities 1