Essays in Self-Criticism

Louis Althusser

Essays in
Self-Criticism
[ Part 2 ]

Translated by Grahame Lock

Réponse à John Lewis was published by François Maspero, 1973
© Louis Althusser, 1973
Eléments d'Autocritique was published by Librairie Hachette, 1974
© Louis Althusser, 1974
Est-Il Simple d'Etre Marxiste en Philosophie? was published in
La Pensée, October 1975
© Louis Althusser, 1975
This edition, Essays in Self-Criticism, first published 1976
© NLB, 1976

Prepared © for the Internet by David J. Romagnolo,
djr@marx2mao.org (July 2003)

Contents

[ Part 2 ]

2. Elements of Self-Criticism

101

[Forward]

[102]

Elements of Self-Criticism

105

On the Evolution of the Young Marx

151

3. Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy?

163

"Something New"

208

Bibliography

217

Index

222

page 100 [blank]

page 101

2.
Elements of
Self-Criticism

page 102

Foreword

The reader will find two previously unpublished essays here.
The first dates from June 1972. It was to be included in the Reply to John Lewis, thus adding to the elements of self-criticism to be found there, which in fact, it may be remembered, were limited to a rectification of the definition of philosophy. But in the end it could not be included in that text, which had to be kept to the length of what was actually only a magazine article, and also because I wanted to preserve the unity of the same text when it was published in French.
In this essay there can be found, for the first time, a critical examination of the positions I took in For Marx and Reading Capital -- positions which, two years after the publication of these works, in the Preface to the Italian edition of Reading Capital, I characterized as affected by a "theoreticist tendency".
I have taken the opportunity of adding to these Elements of Self-Criticism, as a supplement, an earlier essay (from July 1970), which deals with the development of the young Marx, and indicates in what direction I was then working. This self-criticism, whose "logic " and internal arguments I present here, in the form in which they came to disturb our course of thought on the subject, is naturally not a purely internal phenomenon. It can only be understood as the effect of a quite different, external "logic", that of the political events which I referred to in the Reply to John Lewis.

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The reader will work out for himself the necessary relation between these two "logics ", without forgetting the primacy of practice over theory -- that is, the primacy of the class struggle in economics and politics over the class struggle in theory.

May 20, 1974

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To Waldeck Rochet
who admired Spinoza
and spent a long day with me
talking about him, in June 1966.

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Elements of
Self-Criticism

I really think that, after John Lewis has given his point of view on my essays (which are now between seven and twelve years old, since the first article collected in For Marx dates from 1960), after so many critics, indeed, have given their points of view, that I should now present my own.
I have never disowned my essays: there was no good reason to do so. But, in 1967, two years after their publication, I admitted (in an Italian edition of Reading Capital, as well as in other foreign editions) that they were marked by an erroneous tendency. I pointed out the existence of this error, and I gave it a name: theoreticism. Today, I think I can go further, and define the special "object" of the error, its essential forms and its reverberations.
I should add that instead of talking about an.error it would be better to talk about a deviation. A theoreticist deviation. You will see why I am suggesting a change of terminology -- that is, in this case, a change of category -- and what is at stake philosophically and politically when I stress this nuance.
The whole thing can be summed up in a few words.
I wanted to defend Marxism against the real dangers of bourgeois ideology: it was necessary to stress its revolutionary new character; it was therefore necessary to "prove" that there is an antagonism between Marxism and bourgeois ideology, that Marxism could not have developed in Marx or in the labour movement except given a radical and unremitting break with bourgeois ideology, an unceasing struggle against the assaults of this ideology. This thesis was correct. It still is correct.

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But instead of explaining this historical fact in all its dimensions -- social, political, ideological and theoretical -- I reduced it to a simple theoretical fact: to the epistemological "break " which can be observed in Marx's works from 1845 onwards. As a consequence I was led to give a rationalist explanation of the "break", contrasting truth and error in the form of the speculative distinction between science and ideology, in the singular and in general. The contrast between Marxism and bourgeois ideology thus became simply a special case of this distinction. Reduction + interpretation: from this rationalist-speculative drama, the class struggle was practically absent.
All the effects of my theoreticism derive from this rationalist-speculative interpretation.
Thus, to straighten things out, I must re-examine the situation from a critical perspective: not in order to introduce new subjects of discussion (which would create a diversion), but in order to come back to that departure point, to that special "object", on which my theoreticist tendency took the opportunity to fix itself -- in short, to the question of the "break", to that extraordinary political-theoretical adventure which took form and developed, from 1845 onwards, in Marx's work -- so that I can show how I interpreted it when I carried out this reduction.

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1. The "Break"

The "break" is not an illusion, nor a "complete myth", as John Lewis claims. I am sorry: I will not give way on this point. That one must explain the "break" without reducing it, I have just admitted. But look at the situation: I reduced the "break" to a simple rationalist-speculative antithesis; but most of my critics reduced it to nothing ! They rubbed it out, obliterated it, erased it, denied it. And how passionately they carried out this work of proscription and destruction! Let us be explicit: there really does exist, in the history of Marx's theoretical reflection, something like a "break", which is not a nullity, but of vital importance for the history of the whole labour movement. And between those who recognize the fact of the "break" and those who want to reduce it to nothing, there exists an opposition which, it must be acknowledged, is ultimately political.
Let us look at this question a little more closely.
It is clear to every reader who knows the theoretical works which preceded those of Marx -- and which one can list (following Lenin) as: German Philosophy, including the Philosophy of Law and of History; English Political Economy; and French Socialism (utopian or proletarian) -- it is clear and undeniable, because empirically verifiable by a process of comparison (as long as what is analysed is not this or that isolated formula, but the structure and mode of functioning of the texts) that, with The German Ideology, something new and unprecedented appears in Marx's work, something which will never disappear. An historical event in the strong sense, but one which concerns the field of theory, and within theory what I called, using a metaphor, "the opening of the Continent of History". Thus, using metaphors which we shall retain (and we must retain both, and play on the distinction between them),[1] we may speak of this

1. And later create more "correct" ones, and play again on the distinction between them and make it function. Because in philosophy you can only think -- i.e., adjust existing, borrowed categories and produce new ones within the terms required by the theoretical position taken up -- by the use of metaphors.

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event as the "opening of the Continent of History", or (and) of the irruption, of the sudden appearance of the Continent of History within scientific theory.
In fact, something radically new -- though in an often very unstable form, clumsy in working out its new object and terminology,[2] or even still trapped in the old philosophical category,[3] and yet terribly anxious to make its appearance in the world -- really did arrive on the theoretical scene: it had never been seen before, it was in fact unprecedented, and, as we now know, with the benefit of hindsight, it was destined to remain there.
This thesis, which my critics have not spared, I maintain. It is of course very schematic, both in the form in which I originally had to present it and in the form in which I now take it up again. It would need to be backed up by lengthy research and analysis, for which it is only the hypothesis. But none of the objections which have been raised to the thesis, even among the more or less serious ones, seems to me to have weakened it in principle. Because, bare and schematic as it was, it did in the last resort simply register a fact.
What I said was that it is possible to locate, even among the ambiguities and hesitations of The German Ideology, a set of fundamental theoretical concepts, which cannot be found in Marx's earlier texts, and which present the special characteristic of being able to function in quite another manner than in their prehistory. I will not enter here into a study of these new concepts, whose novel organization gave them a quite new meaning and function: mode of production, relations of production, productive forces, social classes rooted in the unity of the productive forces and relations of production, ruling class/oppressed class, ruling

2. Cf. the term "Verkehrsverhältnisse ", which, in The German Ideology, is the theoretical centre around which all the new concepts gravitate: yet which itself "turns" around a so far absent concept, which has not yet been produced in its definitive form: the concept of relations of production.
3. Cf. the "division of labour", which, in The German Ideology, in fact functions as a substitute for the concept of alienation. Thus the theory of the individual, of the human "personality" and of communism which is found in this text.

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ideology/oppressed ideology, class struggle, etc. To take only one example, which can be proved beyond doubt by a process of comparison, I repeat that the theoretical system of the 1844 Manuscripts rested, in contrast, on three basic concepts: Human Essence/Alienation/Alienated Labour.[4] And it should be noted that the "mode of functioning" of this new system or

4. John Lewis, like so many other critics, may well object that one can find in the 1844 Manuscripts most of the concepts of Classical Political Economy -- for example: capital, accumulation, competition, division of labour, wages, profit, etc. Exactly. These are concepts of Classical Political Economy, which Marx borrows just as he finds them there, without changing them one iota, without adding to them any new concept, and without modifying anything at all of their theoretical organization. In the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx actually speaks of the Economists as having said the last word on Economics. He does not modify their concepts, and when he criticizes them, he does so "philosophically", therefore from outside, and in the name of a philosophy which admits its inspiration: "Positive criticism [of political economy ] owes its true foundation to the discoveries of Feuerbach ", author of a "real theoretical revolution ", which Marx then considered decisive (Cf. the 1844 Manuscripts, Moscow 1967, pp. 19-20).
To measure what we might call the difference, we need only to consider the break with Feuerbach which took place a few months later (see the Theses on Feuerbach ), and to note this fact: nowhere in the Manuscripts does the entirely new triadic conception appear, which forms the basis of the hitherto unknown theoretical system that begins to come into view in The German Ideology -- Mode of Production, Relations of Production, Productive Forces. The appearance of this new system produces, from the moment of The German Ideology, a new arrangement of the concepts of Classical Political Economy. They change their place, and also their meaning and function. Soon, the "discovery" (Engels) of surplus-value, placed in the centre of the theory of the capitalist mode of production (surplus-value = capitalist exploitation = class struggle) produces a complete upheaval among these concepts. A quite different form of the critique of Political Economy then appears, which bears no relation to the (Feuerbachian) "philosophical critique" of the Manuscripts, a critique based not on "Feuerbach's great discoveries", but on the reality of the contradictory process of the capitalist mode of production and of the antagonistic class struggle of which it is the site, that is, both cause and effect. The Critique of Political Economy (sub-title of Capital ) now becomes a denunciation of the economism of Classical Political Economy, of political economy as such (which does not take account of relations of exploitation and class struggle) -- and at the same time it becomes an internal account of the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, a critique of the capitalist mode of production from the standpoint of its own tendential laws, which announce its future disappearance under the blows of the proletarian class struggle. All this can be proved, textually.

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conceptual apparatus proved to be quite simply different (without any relation in its "nature", without either a continuity or an "inversion") from the "mode of functioning" of the earlier systems. Because what we are seeing here is a "change of terrain" (I proposed, early on, the use of this important metaphor), therefore a "new terrain" on which the new concepts, after much elaboration, can lay down the foundations of a scientific theory, or (another metaphor) "open the road" to the development of what will, irresistibly, become a science, an unusual science, a revolutionary science, but a theory which contains what we recognize in the sciences, because it provides objective knowledge [connaissances objectives ]. As a matter of fact, it is possible on this new terrain to pose, little by little and for the first time, by using the new concepts, the real problems of concrete history, in the form of scientific problems. It is possible to produce (as Marx does in Capital ) proven theoretical results, that is, results which can be verified by scientific and political practice,[5] and are open to methodical rectification.
Now, the historical appearance[6] of this new Scientific Continent, of this new apparatus of fundamental theoretical concepts, went together -- as you can see empirically in Marx, even if the process is clearly contradictory -- with the theoretical rejection of the old basic notions and (or) of

5. This little "and" (scientific and political practice) naturally poses important problems which cannot be dealt with here. The problems and their solution can be ascribed to what is called the "union" or "fusion" of the Labour Movement with Marxist theory: Lenin, Gramsci and Mao have written crucial texts on these questions.
6. A moment ago I drew a contrast -- in order to bring home the "reduction" which I had made -- between the simple "theoretical fact" of the "break" [coupure ], and the "historical fact" of the break [rupture ] between Marxism and bourgeois ideology. But, considered in itself, the break is also an historical fact. Historical: because we have the right to speak of theoretical events in history. Historical: because it is a case of an event of historical importance, of such great importance that we could, supposing that such a comparison makes any sense, talk of Marx's discovery as the greatest event in the history of knowledge since the "appearance" of mathematics, somewhere in Greece associated with the name of Thales. And we are as yet far from having appreciated the full importance of this theoretical event and of its political consequences.

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their organization, which were recognized and rejected as erroneous.
Caution: we have reached a very sensitive theoretical and political point.
This process of explicit rejection begins in 1845 in The German Ideology, but it is disguised by its very general and abstract form, which contrasts "positive science ", dealing in empirical realities, with the mistakes, the illusions and dreams of ideology, and very precisely of philosophy, which is at this time conceived of simply as ideology: better, as ideology par excellence. But in 1847, in The Poverty of Philosophy, the "settling of accounts" takes place directly on the new scientific terrain, and it is the pseudo-scientific concepts of Proudhon -- who three years earlier, in The Holy Family, had been celebrated as the scientific theoretician of the proletariat -- which now have to pay the price.
What is decisive in all this is the manner in which the accounts are settled. We no longer have a philosophical "critique", which works in part, or can in case of need work by "inversion";[7] we have instead the scientific denunciation of errors as errors, and their elimination, their removal pure and simple: Marx puts an end to the reign of conceptual errors, which he can call errors because he is advancing "truths", scientific concepts. This very special way of "settling accounts" is repeated again and again. It reappears throughout Marx's work, in Capital and later (cf. the showers of

7. Self-criticism on the question of the "inversion". In my first essays I tended to reduce philosophy to science, and, in consequence, I refused to recognize that the figure of the "inversion" had its place in the history of philosophical relations. I began to rectify my position in an article of February 1968, "Marx's Relation to Hegel" [contained in the collection Politics and History, NLB, 1972; Translator's note]. It must be said, however, that philosophy is not (a) science, and that the relation between philosophical positions in the "history" of philosophy does not reproduce the relation between a body of scientific propositions and their (pre-scientific) prehistory. The "inversion" is one of the necessary forms of the internal dialectic between philosophical positions: but only in certain well defined conditions. For there exist many other forms of the same relation, given other conditions. To recognize only one form ("inversion") is to be caught in speculative idealism. Materialism takes very seriously the plurality of forms of relation, and their determinate conditions.

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criticism directed at the Social-Democratic leaders for their theoretical errors, contained in the Gotha Programme, and at Wagner for the Hegelian theoretical nonsense which he talked about the concept of value and its "division" into exchange-value and use-value). It is repeated in Lenin (polemic with the Narodniks, the "romantics", with Rosa Luxemburg over Capital, with Kautsky on the State and Imperialism, etc.), in Gramsci (polemic with Bukharin over historical materialism, etc.), and in Mao. It never comes to an end. A science (Lenin repeats it again and again when he talks about historical materialism) never comes to an end.
But every science[8] begins. Of course, it always has a prehistory, out of which it emerges. But it does emerge, in two senses: in the ordinary sense, and in another sense, its own special sense, which distinguishes it above all from the philosophy with which it coexists within theory, but also from other realities, like the practical and theoretical ideologies.
It emerges in the ordinary sense: this means that it is not born out of nothing, but out of a process of labour by which it is hatched, a complex and multiple process, sometimes brightened by a flash of lightning, but which normally operates blindly, in the dark, because "it" never knows where it is headed, nor, if ever it arrives, where it is going to surface. It is born out of the unpredictable, incredibly complex and paradoxical -- but, in its contingency, necessary -- conjunction of ideological, political, scientific (related to other sciences), philosophical and other "elements ", which at some moment[9] "discover ", but after the event, that they needed each other,

8. What follows should not be understood as a relapse into a theory of science (in the singular), which would be quite speculative, but as the minimum of generality necessary to be able to grasp a concrete object. Science (in the singular) does not exist. But nor does "production in general": and yet Marx talks about "production in general", and deliberately, consciously, in order to be able to analyse concrete modes of production.
9. Not necessarily at any precise moment (though, in exceptional circumstances this just could be: certain scientists, following Pascal, talk about their "night", that is, about the sudden proof which comes at "daybreak" when they are suddenly blessed with "sight"), but at a moment which can still be roughly fixed in historical time and its periods.

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since they come together, without however recognizing one another, in the theoretical shape of a new-born science. This is the first sense in which a science emerges from its prehistory, like everything that comes into the world, from atoms to living things and to men, including the code for their genetic reproduction.
But a science also emerges from its prehistory in its own special way: in quite another manner which, at least in theory, is proper to itself, since it distinguishes it, among other things, from the way in which a philosophy "emerges" from its history. In this second sense, you can almost say that a science emerges from its prehistory in the same way as Marx emerged from the room of the Communist Weitling, with the famous remark: "Ignorance will never be an argument!", taking hold of the door and slamming it. Rejecting all or part of its prehistory, calling it erroneous: an error. And, at least in the very beginning, it is not too bothered with the "detail". It hardly matters that its judgement is, strictly speaking, "unjust" -- it is not a question of morality. And it hardly matters -- on the contrary! -- that ideologists arrive on the scene much later, when it is clear that this fatherless infant can no longer be got rid of, and provide it with an official genealogy which, in order to conjure the child away,[10] looks into its prehistory, chooses for it and imposes on it The father who had to have this child (to keep it a bit quiet). It hardly matters -- or, on the contrary, it matters very much! -- that genuine scholars, rather heretically of course, come on the scene very much later to re-establish the existence of lines of descent so complex and so contingent in their necessity that they force the conclusion that the child was born without a (single-identifiable) father : but one must

10. Thus the bourgeois ideologists: they have discovered that Marx is nothing else than Ricardo, that Capital is nothing else than the chapter of Hegel's Philosophy of Right on Sittlichkeit (family apart): Civil Society + State, inverted (of course). "Find the lady", says the conventional Wisdom of detective novels. When the slogan is "find the father", it is obviously out of interest in the child: in order to make it disappear. Lenin, at all events, without going into detail, said, as if in passing, that Marxism had three "sources", no less! -- a way, which has hardly been understood, of rejecting the question of THE father.

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nevertheless accept the evidence and try to take account of this fact. Every recognized science not only has emerged from its own prehistory, but continues endlessly to do so (its prehistory remains always contemporary: something like its Alter Ego ) by rejecting what it considers to be error, according to the process which Bachelard called "the epistemological break [rupture ]".
I owe this idea to him, but to give it (to use a metaphor) the sharpest possible cutting-edge, I called it the "epistemological break [coupure ]". And I made it the central category of my first essays.
What a fuss I raised! The use of this expression caused a real Holy Alliance to be formed against me; it united first those -- bourgeois -- who will defend to the death the Continuity of History, of which they are the masters, and of Culture, which provides them with the facade that they need in order to believe in their empire and its uninterrupted future; it also included those Communists who know that according to Lenin, all the resources of human knowledge are required in order to construct socialism once the revolution is made, but who think -- like the Marxists of the Gotha Programme -- that it is not worth risking the loss of their political allies for a few "displaced" scientific concepts in the unity platform; and it included too those more or less anarchist elements which, using different political arguments, accused me of having introduced "bourgeois" concepts into Marxism, because I talked about it in terms of a "break".
But I shall continue to defend my theses, while of course rectifying them, at least until others -- better suited and thus more correct -- are proposed. I repeat: I shall continue to defend them, both for clear political reasons and for compelling theoretical reasons.
Let us not try to fool ourselves: this debate and argument are, in the last resort, political. This is not only the case with my openly bourgeois critics, but also with the others. Who, really, is naïve enough to think that the expressions: Marxist theory, Marxist science -- sanctioned, moreover, time and time again by the history of the Labour Movement, by the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao -- would have produced the storms, the denunciations, the passions which

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we have witnessed,[11] if nothing had been at stake except a simple quarrel over words? This is not a debate about philology! To hang on to or to reject these words, to defend them or to destroy them -- something real is at stake in these struggles, whose ideological and political character is obvious. It is not too much to say that what is at stake today, behind the argument about words, is Leninism. Not only the recognition of the existence and role of Marxist theory and science, but also the concrete forms of the fusion between the Labour Movement and Marxist theory, and the conception of materialism and the dialectic.
I know that it is not always easy to be fair. I agree that the ideological struggle is often confused, that the camps in this struggle are partly mixed up, and that arguments sometimes go on above the heads of the combatants. I recognize that not everyone who declares himself for one side really takes up all its positions, and that he may while trying for one result produce another. The attacks against the idea of a Marxist science may even, as a result of certain of the arguments used, knock down by ricochet certain definite errors. Let us say that public positions must always be judged against the system of positions actually held and against the effects they produce. For example, to look at only one side of the question, you may declare yourself for Marxist theory and yet defend this theory on the basis of positivist, therefore non-Marxist positions -- with all the consequences. Because you cannot really defend Marxist theory and science except on the basis of dialectical-materialist (therefore non-speculative and non-positivist) positions, trying to appreciate that quite extraordinary, because unprecedented, reality: Marxist theory as a revolutionary theory, Marxist science as a revolutionary science.
What is really unprecedented in these expressions is the combination of the terms "revolutionary" and "theory" ("Without an objectively/revolutionary/theory there can

11. Need it be recalled that these are not recent . . . That long before the arrival of Raymond Aron, Benedetto Croce (and he was not the first) denied all scientific value to Capital? That (without going back to Stirner's "anti-theoretical" reactions) the "left" critique of the idea of a Marxist science can already be found in the young Lukàcs, in Korsch, in Pannekoek, etc.?

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be no objectively/revolutionary/movement": Lenin), and, since science is the index of objectivity of theory, the combination of the terms "revolutionary" and "science". But in these combinations, which, if taken seriously, upset the received idea of theory and of science, the terms "theory" and "science" nevertheless remain. This is neither "fetishism" nor bourgeois "reification", nor is it a slip of the pen. Politically and theoretically, we cannot do without these words: because until it is proved otherwise, within the bounds of existing practices we have no others, and we have no better. And if Marx, Engels and Lenin, throughout their political battles and theoretical work, never abandoned them as guides and as weapons, that is because they considered them indispensable to their political and theoretical struggle: to the revolutionary liberation of the proletariat.
We therefore have the right, and the duty, to speak (as all the classics have done) of Marxist theory, and, within Marxist theory, of a science and a philosophy: provided that we do not thereby fall into theoreticism, speculation or positivism. And, to touch immediately on the most delicate point: yes, we have the right, as far as theory is concerned, and the duty, politically, to use and defend -- by fighting for the word -- the philosophical category of "science", with reference to Marxism-Leninism, and to talk about the foundation by Marx of a revolutionary science. But we must then explain the reason for, the conditions and sense of this unprecedented combination, which brings about a decisive "shift" in our conception of science. To use and defend the word "science" in the context of this programme is a necessity, in order to resist the bourgeois subjective idealists and the petty-bourgeois Marxists who, all of them, shout "positivism" as soon as they hear the term, no doubt because the only picture they can conjure up of the practice and history of a science, and a fortiori of Marxist science, is the classical positivist or vulgar, bourgeois picture. It is a necessity if we want to resist the petty-bourgeois ideologists, Marxists or not, who like to weep over the "reification" and "alienation" of objectivity (as Stirner used to weep over "the Holy"), no doubt because they attach themselves without any embarrassment to the very antithesis which

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constitutes the basis of bourgeois legal and philosophical ideology, the antithesis between Person (Liberty = Free Will = Law) and Thing.[12] Yes, it is quite correct for us to speak of an unimpeachable and undeniable scientific core in Marxism, that of Historical Materialism, in order to draw a vital, clear and unequivocal line (even if you must -- and you must indeed -- continue forever to "work" on this line, to avoid falling into positivism and speculation) between: on the one hand the workers, who need objective, verifiable and verified -- in short scientific -- knowledge, in order to win victory, not in words, but in facts, over their class opponents; and, on the other hand, not only the bourgeoisie, which of course refuses Marxism any claim to be scientific, but also those who are willing to content themselves with a personal or fake theory, put together in their imagination or according to their petty-bourgeois "desire", or who refuse the very idea of a scientific theory, even the word "science", even the word "theory", on the pretext that

12. One only has to open a textbook of law or jurisprudence, to see clearly that Law [Droit ] -- which, uniquely, works as one with its ideology, because it needs it to be able to "function" -- and therefore legal ideology, is, in the last instance, and usually surprisingly transparently, the basis of all bourgeois ideology. One needs a Marxist lawyer to demonstrate it, and a Marxist philosopher to understand it. As far as philosophers in general are concerned, they have not yet cut through the fog that surrounds them, and they hardly suspect the presence of Law and of legal ideology in their ruminations: in philosophy itself. However, the evidence is there: the dominant classical bourgeois philosophy (and its by-products, even the modern ones) is built on legal ideology, and its "philosophical objects" (philosophy has no object, it has its objects) are legal categories or entities: the Subject, the Object, Liberty, Free Will, Property (Properties), Representation, Person, Thing, etc. But those thinkers, those Marxists, who have recognized the bourgeois legal character of these categories and who criticize them, must still find their way out of the trap of traps: the idea and programme of a "theory of knowledge ". This is the keystone of classical bourgeois philosophy, which is still dominant. Now unless (like Lenin and Mao) we use this expression in a context which indicates where to get out of the circle, in the philosophical rather than the scientific sense, then the idea may be taken as constitutive of philosophy, and even of "Marxist philosophy", and you remain caught in bourgeois ideology's trap of traps. For the simple question to which the "theory of knowledge" replies is still a question of Law, posed in terms of the validity of knowledge.

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every science or even every theory is essentially "reifying", alienating and therefore bourgeois.[13]
And I should add: we also have the right to speak about an "epistemological break" and to use this philosophical category to mark the historical-theoretical fact of the birth of a science, including, in spite of its unique character, Marxist revolutionary science, by the visible symptom of its emergence from its prehistory, its rejection of the errors of that prehistory. On condition, of course, that what are only effects are not taken for the cause -- but instead that the signs and effects of the "break" are considered as the theoretical phenomenon of the appearance of a science in the history of theory, which brings up the question of the social, political, ideological and philosophical conditions of this irruption.

13. One day it will be necessary to clear up the problem of the theory which serves as a philosophical alibi for all this "reification" literature: the theory of commodity fetishism in Book I, Part I of Capital. Meanwhile it may be hoped that all those who, in spite of their aversion to the idea of Marxist science and even Marxist theory, nevertheless go out of their way to call themselves Marxists, will not satisfy themselves with the bad passages from Reich (who also wrote some good ones) and Marcuse (who did not) and others, but will take the trouble to read Stirner, a real man of the (Parisian) moment, and Marx's reply to him in The German Ideology. These are texts which, on the question of "theory", do not lack a certain bite.

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2. "Science and Ideology"

Now this is the very point at which I must -- since no-one else has really rendered me the service --[14] declare my theoreticist error: on the question of the "break".
In the end, and in spite of all my precautions, I conceived and defined this "break" in the rationalist terms of science and non-science. Not openly in the "classical" terms of the opposition between truth and error (of a Cartesian type, reproducing an antithesis "fixed" from its origins, from Platonism onwards). Not in terms of an opposition between knowledge and ignorance (that of Enlightenment philosophy). But, if I may say so, worse: in terms of an opposition between science (in the singular) and ideology (in the singular).
Why was this worse?
Because in this way a very important but very equivocal -- and thus misleading -- notion was brought into play, based on its contrast with that of science, a notion which appears in The German Ideology, where one and the same term plays two different roles, designating a philosophical category on the one hand (illusion, error), and a scientific concept on the other (formation of the superstructure): the notion of ideology. And although The German Ideology encourages this confusion, Marx did after all overcome it, and so made it easier for us to avoid the trap. But this equivocal notion of ideology was brought into play within the rationalist context of the antithesis between truth and error. And so ideology was reduced to error, and error called ideology, and this whole rationalist game was given a fraudulent Marxist appearance.
I do not need to say what this led to, ideologically and

14. It may be that someone has done it, and that I simply have not heard. My excuses. In what I have been able to read, I have often come across absolute condemnations, very strong reservations and also some severe but correct remarks: and yet no coherent criticism which goes to the root of the matter, nothing really enlightening and convincing. But perhaps I have simply been deaf and blind . . .

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practically.[15] And in fact this disguise, which disguised nothing, did have its consequences. But Marxism, although it is rational, is not Rationalism, not even "modern" Rationalism (of which some of our predecessors, before the war, dreamed, in the heat of the struggle against Nazi irrationalism). And, in spite of everything which I said in another connexion about the basically practical, social and political function of ideology, because (encouraged by The German Ideology ) I used one and the same term in two senses, the importance which I placed in its first use, a philosophical and definitely rationalist one ( = the exposure of illusions, of errors) caused my interpretation, objectively, to fall into theoreticism on this point.
Nevertheless, and even in the equivocal terms of The German Ideology, this disguise of error as ideology could take on and in fact did take on another meaning. Ideology was only the Marxist "name" for error. But even in The German Ideology, which itself carried out this reduction, you could feel that behind the contrast between "positive truth" and ideological illusion, a quite different break with the past -- not simply theoretical, but political and ideological, and on a quite different scale -- was making its appearance and working itself out. This break was the one which Marx made not with ideology in general, not only with the existing ideological conceptions of history, but with bourgeois ideology, with the dominant, reigning bourgeois conception of the world, which held sway not only over social practices but also within the practical and theoretical ideologies, in philosophy, and even in the products of Political Economy and utopian socialism. The fact that this domination was

15. I will mention only one name as an example and as an exemplary case: that of Lysenko. And with it, his deceptive contrast: "bourgeois science/ proletarian science". In short, two memories of a certain period (to say no more). A number of my critics, Communists and others, understood very well at the time (1960-65) when I published my first essays, that even at the very modest level at which they intervened political questions were also at stake. Certain were quite correct, at least at the time. For what is often forgotten is that the "conjuncture" has changed in the last ten years, in some of its least apparent aspects, and, in its contingent respects, the front of the theoretical struggle has moved, just like the front of the political struggle. But the basis has remained largely unchanged.

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not absolute, but the result of a struggle against survivals of the feudal conception of the world and against the fragile foundations of a new, proletarian conception of the world -- this too is a fact of vital importance for understanding Marx's position. For he was only able to break with bourgeois ideology in its totality because he took inspiration from the basic ideas of proletarian ideology, and from the first class struggles of the proletariat, in which this ideology became flesh and blood. This is the "event" which, behind the rationalist facade of the contrast between "positive truth" and ideological illusion, gave this contrast its real historical dimension. I certainly "sensed" that what was at stake in this debate was the break with bourgeois ideology, since I set to work to identify and characterize this ideology (in terms of humanism, historicism, evolutionism, economism, idealism, etc.). But for want of understanding at that time the mechanisms of ideology, its forms, its functions, its class tendencies, and its necessary relations with philosophy and the sciences, I was not really able to clarify the link existing between, on the one hand, Marx's break with bourgeois ideology, and on the other hand, the "epistemological break".
This latter "break" is not an illusion.
Behind this disguise of error as ideology, there stood a fact: the declaration of opposition between truth and error which is objectively one of the symptoms of the birth, of the appearance of a science (when this really is what has taken place). Whatever has been claimed, there is no doubt that I did not hold to a "non-dialectical" opposition between science and ideology: for I showed that this opposition was recurrent, therefore historical and dialectical, since it is only if the truth has been "discovered" and "acquired", and then alone, that the scientist can look back from this established position towards the prehistory of his science, and declare that it consists in part or whole of error, of a "tissue of errors" (Bachelard), even if he recognizes within it partial truths which he exempts or anticipations which he retains (for example: Classical Political Economy, utopian socialism). But this very exemption is only possible because the partial truths and anticipations of its prehistory are now recognized and identified as such, on the basis of the

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finally discovered and established truth. "Habemus enim ideam veram . . ." (Spinoza). It is just because (enim ) we possess (habemus ) a true idea that . . . that we can also say: "Verum index sui et falsi "; what is true is the sign both of itself and of what is false, and the recognition of error (and of partial truths) depends on starting from what is true.
It is still the case, however, that in reducing and extending the "break" to this simple opposition between science and ideology -- even if I did call it recurrent, even "perpetual" and "endless" -- I uncritically adopted the point of view which "science" (in the singular) holds about itself (and, all too clearly, not only about itself!); or rather -- since this formula is still idealist -- I adopted the point of view which the "agents" of scientific practice hold about their own practice and the history of its results; or rather -- since this formula is even now still idealist -- [16] the point of view of the "spontaneous philosophy of scientists" (Lenin) who see, in the beginnings of a science, only the finished contrast between before and after, between the truth (or truths) discovered and the errors rejected. Now I have since (in a Philosophy Course for Scientists, 1967) tried to show precisely that this "spontaneous philosophy of scientists" is not spontaneous, and does not at all derive from the philosophical imagination of the scientists as such: for it is quite simply the repetition, by these scholars and scientists, of Theses of contradictory tendencies developed publicly by philosophy itself -- that is, ultimately, by the "philosophy of philosophers".
I did, then, note the existence of the "break", but since I treated it in terms of the Marxist disguise of error as ideology, and -- in spite of all the history and dialectics which I tried

16. Cf. on this subject all the ambiguities which arise -- like a bird at the footsteps of the huntsman -- from the simple use of Bachelard's formula: "les travailleurs de la preuve ", especially when they are gathered into the "cité des savants ". But the "cité des savants " only exists in the bourgeois division between manual and intellectual labour, and in the bourgeois ideology of "science and technique" which helps this division to function by approving it and justifying it from a simply bourgeois point of view. The proletarian point of view on the question is quite different: the suppression of the "cité des savants ", the "union" of the scientists with the workers and militants, and onwards to communist forms of the division of labour totally unknown and unimaginable from the bourgeois viewpoint.

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to "inject"[17] into it -- in categories which in the last resort were rationalist, I could not explain what was the basis of this break; and if, deep down, I sensed it, I was incapable of grasping it[18] and expressing it.
Thus in fact I reduced the break between Marxism and bourgeois ideology to the "epistemological break", and the antagonism between Marxism and bourgeois ideology to the antagonism between science and ideology.
This false position, like any correct one, had its consequences. It might not have done so if I had been satisfied with limiting its expression to a few phrases. But I was naïve enough (or logical enough) to make a theoretical argument out of it, and to insert it into a line of argument rigorous enough for me to have to pay the price.
I theorized this "error" of the rationalist opposition between science (truths) and ideology (errors), in spite of all kinds of necessarily inoperative reserves, in terms of three figures which embodied and summed up my theoreticist (i.e. rationalist-speculative) tendency:

1. A (speculative) sketch of the theory of the difference between science (in the singular) and ideology (in the singular) in general.

2. The category of "theoretical practice" (in so far as, in

17. For the inevitable -- and inevitably negative -- results of the attempt to "inject" dialectics into all kinds of theses and theories, compare Marx's experience with Proudhon: "I tried to inject him with the Hegelian dialectic . . . " Without success. Indeed, if we take the word of The Poverty of Philosophy, criticizing The Philosophy of Poverty, we should perhaps even speak of a catastrophe! The dialectic cannot be "injected", nor, following the technical metaphor strictly, can it be "applied ". Hegel pointed this out forcefully. On this point at least we must follow Hegel. On this point -- which still leaves others to be debated -- Marx and Lenin are Hegelians. One cannot talk of the injection or application of the dialectic. Here we touch on a very sensitive philosophical point (indicated by two simple words). In philosophy "lines of demarcation" meet and intersect at points, which thus become sensitive points: an encounter at the crossroads.
18. I say: incapable of grasping it. Because it is not possible, if you want to do serious work, to remain satisfied with general and established formulae, which, parasitic on others, give you the impression and conviction of being on the right road and of having found just the right word for the thing.

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the existing context, it tended to reduce philosophical practice to scientific practice).

3. The (speculative) thesis of philosophy as "Theory of theoretical practice" -- which represented the highest point in the development of this theoreticist tendency.[19]
Of course, this last thesis on philosophy was not without its secondary effects on the Marxist conception of science,

19. You only need to bring these three theses together to understand the term by which I have named my deviation: theoreticism. Theoreticism here means: prirnacy of theory over practice; one-sided insistence on theory; but more precisely: speculative-rationalism. To explain only the pure form: to conceive matters in terms of the contrast between truth and error was in fact rationalism. But it was speculation to want to conceive the contrast between established truths and acknowledged errors within a General Theory of Science and Ideology and of the distinction between them. Of course I am simplifying and forcing things to the extreme, reasoning them out to their ultimate conclusions -- for our analyses never actually went so far, certainly not reaching these conclusions. But the tendency is undeniable.
It was organized, as is often the case, around the manifest form of a word, whose credentials seemed beyond doubt: Epistemology. Thus we went back to Bachelard, who makes constant use of the term, and also to Canguilhem who, though we did not notice it, uses it very little. We (especially I) used it and abused it, and did not know how to control that use. I point this out because a whole number of our readers jumped on to this, reinforcing by their own philosophical inclinations the theoreticist tendency of our essays
What did we understand by Epistemology ? Literally: the theory of the conditions and forms of scientific practice and of its history in the different concrete sciences. But this definition could be understood in two ways. In a materialist way, which could lead us to study the material, social, political, ideological and philosophical conditions of the theoretical "modes of production" and "production processes" of already existing knowledge: but this would properly fall within the domain of Historical Materialism! Or in a speculative way, according to which Epistemology could lead us to form and develop the theory of scientific practice (in the singular) in distinction to other practices: but how did it now differ from philosophy, also defined as "Theory of theoretical practice"? We were now within the domain of "Dialectical Materialism", since philosophy was and is nothing but Epistemology. This was the crossroads. If Epistemology is philosophy itself, their speculative unity can only reinforce theoreticism. But if Epistemology is based on Historical Materialism (though naturally possessing a minimum of concepts which are its own and specify its object), then it must be placed within it; and, at the same time, the illusion and deception involved in the very project must be recognized. It follows (as we have since pointed out) that one must give up this project, and criticize the idealism or idealist connotations of all Epistemology.

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of historical materialism, not so much because of the use to which I put the distinction (correct in principle) between science and Marxist "philosophy" as because of the way in which I treated this relation (philosophy being, ultimately, treated as theory like science, made of the same stuff, with the added capital letter: Theory). Very unfortunate consequences resulted as far as the presentation of the modality of Marxist science, of Historical Materialism, was concerned -- especially in Reading Capital.
It was no doubt on this occasion that the accidental by-product of my theoreticist tendency, the young pup called structuralism, slipped between my legs . . .

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3. Structuralism?

It must be admitted that it thus became tempting to flirt (kokettieren ), not with the structure and its elements, etc. (because all these concepts are in Marx), but for example with the notion of the "effectivity of an absent cause" -- which is, it must be said, much more Spinozist than structuralist! -- in order to account at one and the same time for Classical Political Economy's "mistakes", for the Relations of Production, and even for fetishism (but I did not do so: the theory of fetishism always seemed to me ideological) -- and to herald, by the term structural causality (cf. Spinoza), something which is in fact an "immense theoretical discovery" of Marx but which can also, in the Marxist tradition, be termed dialectical materialist causality. Provided that their critical effects are kept under control, these notions are not entirely useless -- an example is the notion of the "absent cause".[20] But we were not always able to restrain ourselves,

20. In three senses:
1. Political. For example, it is difficult to "put your finger" on "the" cause of what some have called "Stalinism" and others "the personality cult". The effects were certainly present, but the cause was absent;
2. Scientific. Supposing that, by scientific analysis, "the" cause was found, and that we call it (in order to call it something) the "Stalinian deviation", even so this cause is itself only one link in the dialectic of the class struggle of the Labour Movement in a situation dominated by the construction of socialism in one country, itself a moment of the history of the International Labour Movement, in the world-wide class struggles of the imperialist stage of capitalism, the whole thing being determined "in the last instance" by the "contradiction" between the Relations of Production and Productive Forces.
But it is also not possible to "put your finger" on this contradiction, determinant "in the last instance", as the cause. One can only grasp it and understand it within the forms of the class struggle which constitutes, in the strict sense, its historical existence. To say that "the cause is absent" thus means, in Historical Materialism, that the "contradiction determinant in the last instance" is never present in person on the scene of history ("the hour of the determination in the last instance never strikes") and that one can never grasp it directly, as one can a "person who is present". It is a "cause", but in the dialectical sense, in the sense that it determines what, on the stage of the class struggle, is the "decisive link" which must be grasped; [cont. onto p. 127. -- DJR]
3. Philosophical. It is true that the dialectic is a thesis of the "absent" cause, but in a sense which must be understood as quite distinct from the supposed structuralist connotation of the term. The dialectic makes the reigning cause disappear, because it destroys, surpasses and "transcends" the mechanistic, pre-Hegelian category of cause, conceived as the billiard ball in person, something which can be grasped, cause identified with substance, with the subject, etc. The dialectic makes mechanical causality disappear, by putting forward the thesis of a quite different "causality".

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in certain pages of Reading Capital, in that Spring of 1965, and our "flirt" with structuralist terminology obviously went beyond acceptable limits, because our critics, with a few exceptions, did not see the irony or parody intended. For we had in mind quite another Personage than the anonymous author of structuralist themes and their vogue! We shall soon see who.
There were however certain indications in our essays which might have given cause for reflexion. I have for example always wondered how structuralism could swallow and digest categories like "determination in the last instance", "domination/subordination", to mention only these. But what did it matter? For flagrant reasons of convenience, we were called "structuralists", and it was in a coffin marked "structuralism" that the great family of Social-Democrats from all parties and lands solemnly bore us to our grave and buried us, in the name of Marxism -- that is, of their Marxism. The spadefuls of earth -- of "history", of "practice", of the "dialectic", of the "concrete", of "life", and of course of "Man" and "Humanism" -- fell thick and fast, For a funeral, it was a nice one. With this rather special characteristic: that the years have passed, but the ceremony is still going on.
I will say no more about these episodes, for while they are not lacking in interest (it still remains to show why), they can distract us from the essential point, and for a very simple reason. This is that the criticisms which were then addressed to us put things in the wrong order: they called us structuralists, but they said little about our theoreticism. In a sense, they certainly did bury something: the main deviation, theoreticism, was buried beneath a secondary deviation (and problematic), structuralism. And it is easy

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to understand why: the point is that the Marxist thesis of theoretical anti-humanism, the formulation of which may have "overlapped" with certain good "structuralist" (anti-psychologistic, anti-historicist) reflexes of some important thinkers (Saussure and his school), who of course were no Marxists, came directly into conflict with their humanist ideology. What our critics, fascinated by the pseudo-antagonism between structuralism and humanism, and fixed within an antithesis which suited them, could neither see nor understand, was that certain demarcation lines can overlap in this way, can meet at certain sensitive points; that in the philosophical battle you sometimes have to take over a certain key point occupied by others (who may be enemies) in order to make it part of your own defensive positions (it may then change its significance, because it will then be part of a quite different system); that this integration procedure is not guaranteed by anyone in advance, and that it involves risks, precisely those risks to which Marx draws attention when, in Book I of Capital, he "flirts" with Hegel and his terminology. That is why things must be put back in their proper order. With hindsight, and benefiting from the criticisms which were made of me (I did not ignore them: some were very much to the point) and from further thought, I believe that six years later I can stand by the terms of my brief but precise self-criticism of 1967 and identify a fundamental theoreticist ( = rationalist- speculative) deviation in my first essays (For Marx, Reading Capital ) and also, in Reading Capital, its circumstantial by-product, a very ambiguous "flirtation" with structuralist terminology.
But since the question of structuralism has arisen, I should like to say a few words about it.
This very French speciality is not a "philosophers' philosophy": no philosopher gave it its name, nor its seal, and no philosopher has taken up its vague and changing themes in order to create the unity of a systematic conception out of them. This is not an accident. Structuralism, born of theoretical problems encountered by scientists in their practical work (in linguistics from the time of Saussure, in social anthropology from the time of Boas and Lévi-Strauss, in

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psychoanalysis, etc.), is no "philosophers' philosophy", but a "philosophy" or "philosophical ideology of scientists". That its themes are vague and changing, that their boundary is very ill-defined, does not mean that its general tendency cannot be characterized: as rationalist, mechanistic, and above all formalist. Ultimately (and this can be seen in certain of the texts of Levi-Strauss, and among linguists or other philosophizing logicians) structuralism (or rather: certain structuralists) tends towards the ideal of the production of the real as an effect of a combinatory of elements. But of course since "it" uses a whole lot of concepts drawn from existing disciplines, we could not honestly accuse structuralism of being the first to use the concept of structure!
At this point it is important to remember that structuralism is not a completely worked-out philosophy, but a jumble of vague themes which only realizes its ultimate tendency under certain definite conditions. According to what you "understand" by structuralism (e.g., anti-psychologism), according to what you see in it when you come up against concepts which it has in fact borrowed, and according to whether you follow the extreme logic which inspires it, either you are not a structuralist or you are one more or less, or you really are one. Now no-one can claim that we ever gave way to the crazy formalist idealism of the idea of producing the real by a combinatory of elements. Marx does speak of the "combination" of elements in the structure of a mode of production. But this combination (Verbindung ) is not a formal "combinatory": we expressly pointed that out. Purposely. In fact this is where the most important demarcation line is drawn.
For example, there is no question of deducing (therefore of predicting) the different "possible" modes of production by the formal play of the different possible combination of elements; and in particular, it is not possible to construct in this way, a priori . . . the communist mode of production! Marx constantly uses the concepts of position and function, and the concept of Träger ("supports "), meaning a support of relations : but this is not in order to make concrete realities disappear, to reduce real men to pure functions of supports -- it is in order to make mechanisms intelligible by grasping them

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through their concept, and beginning with these (since this is the only possible way) to make intelligible the concrete realities which can only be grasped by making a detour through abstraction. But just because Marx uses the concepts of structure, elements, point, function, Träger, relations, determination by relations, forms and transformed forms, displacement, etc., that does not make him a structuralist, since he is not a formalist. Here the second demarcation line is drawn.
Marx's concepts are actually used and confined within precise limits; and they are subjected to other concepts which define their limits of validity : the concepts of process, contradiction, tendency, limit, domination, subordination, etc. Here a third demarcation line is drawn.
For there are those who have said, or will one day say, that Marxism is distinguished from structuralism by the primacy of the process over the structure. Formally, this is not false; but it is also true of Hegel! If you want to go to the heart of the matter, you must go much deeper. For it is possible to conceive of a formalism of the process (of which the bourgeois economists offer us daily a caricature), therefore a structuralism . . . of the process! In truth what we need to look at is the strange status of a decisive concept in Marxist theory, the concept of tendency (tendential law, law of a tendential process, etc.). In the concept of tendency there appears not only the contradiction internal to the process (Marxism is not a structuralism, not because it affirms the primacy of the process over the structure, but because it affirms the primacy of contradiction over the process: yet even this is not enough) but something else, which politically and philosophically is much more important -- the special, unique status which makes Marxist science a revolutionary science. Not simply a science which revolutionaries can use in order to make revolution, but a science which they can use because it rests on revolutionary class theoretical positions.
Of course we did not see this last point clearly in 1965. Which means that we had not yet appreciated the exceptional importance of the role of the class struggle in Marx's philosophy and in the theoretical apparatus of Capital itself. It

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is a fact: although we suspected that Marxist science was not "a science like the others", we did finally treat it as "a science like the others", thus falling into the dangers of theoreticism. But we were never structuralists.

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4. On Spinoza

If we never were structuralists, we can now explain why: why we seemed to be, even though we were not, why there came about this strange misunderstanding on the basis of which books were written. We were guilty of an equally powerful and compromising passion: we were Spinozists. In our own way, of course, which was not Brunschvicg's! And by attributing to the author of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and the Ethics a number of theses which he would surely never have acknowledged, though they did not actually contradict him. But to be a heretical Spinozist is almost orthodox Spinozism, if Spinozism can be said to be one of the greatest lessons in heresy that the world has seen! In any case, with very few exceptions our blessed critics, imbued with conviction and swayed by fashion, never suspected any of this. They took the easy road: it was so simple to join the crowd and shout "structuralism"! Structuralism was all the rage, and you did not have to read about it in books to be able to talk about it. But you have to read Spinoza and know that he exists: that he still exists today. To recognize him, you must at least have heard of him.
Let us clarify this business in a few words. After all, to lump structuralism and theoreticism together is hardly satisfactory or illuminating, because something in this combination is always "hidden": formalism, which happens to be essential to structuralism! On the other hand, to bring structuralism and Spinozism together may clarify certain points, and certain limits, as far as the theoreticist deviation is concerned.
But then comes the important objection: why did we make reference to Spinoza, when all that was required was for us simply to be Marxists? Why this detour? Was it necessary, and what price did we have to pay for it? The fact is: we did make the detour, and we paid dearly. But that is not the question. The question is: what is the meaning of the question? What can it mean to say that we should simply be Marxists (in philosophy)? In fact I had found out (and I was not

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the only one, but the reasons which I gave at the time are still almost all relevant) just how hard it was in practice to be a Marxist in philosophy. Having for years banged our heads against a wall of enigmatic texts and wretched commentaries on them, we had to decide to step back and make a detour.
In itself, nothing scandalous. It is not simply accidental, personal factors which are relevant here: we all begin from a given point of view, which we do not choose; and to recognize it and understand it we need to have moved on from this point, at the cost of so much effort. It is the work of philosophy itself which is at stake here: for it requires steps back and detours. What else did Marx do, throughout his endless research, but go back to Hegel in order to rid himself of Hegel and to find his own way, what else but rediscover Hegel in order to distinguish himself from Hegel and to define himself? Could this really have been a purely personal affair -- fascination, rejection, then a return to a youthful passion? Something was working in Marx which went beyond the individual level: the need for every philosophy to make a detour via other philosophies in order to define itself and grasp itself in terms of its difference: its division. In reality (and whatever its pretensions) no philosophy is given in the simple, absolute fact of its presence -- least of all Marxist philosophy (which in fact never made the claim). It only exists in so far as it "works out" its difference from other philosophies, from those which, by similarity or contrast, help it sense, perceive and grasp itself, so that it can take up its own positions. Lenin's attitude to Hegel is an example: working to separate out from the "debris" and useless "rubbish" those "elements" which might help in the effort to work out a differential definition. We are only now beginning to see a little more clearly into this necessary procedure.[21] How can it be denied that this procedure is indispensable to every philosophy, including Marxist philosophy itself? Marx, it has often been pointed out, was not content with making a single detour, via Hegel; he also constantly and explicitly, in his insistent use of

21. Cf. D. Lecourt, Une Crise et son enjeu, Maspero, 1973.

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certain categories, measured himself against Aristotle, "that great thinker of the Forms". And how can it be denied that these detours, indispensable as they were, nevertheless had to be paid for, that we do not yet know (though we have our suspicions) what the theoretical cost really is, and that we can only find out by ourselves working on these detours ?
This -- keeping the matter (of course) in proportion -- is how we approached Spinoza, courageously or imprudently (as you prefer). In our subjective history, and in the existing ideological and theoretical conjuncture, this detour became a necessity.
Why?
If a reason, one single and therefore fundamental reason must be given, here it is: we made a detour via Spinoza in order to improve our understanding of Marx's philosophy. To be precise: since Marx's materialism forced us to think out the meaning of the necessary detour via Hegel, we made the detour via Spinoza in order to clarify our understanding of Marx's detour via Hegel. A detour, therefore; but with regard to another detour. At stake was something enormously important: the better understanding of how and under what conditions a dialectic borrowed from the "most speculative" chapters of the Great Logic of Absolute Idealism (borrowed conditionally on an "inversion" and a "demystification", which also have to be understood) can be materialist and critical. Now this astonishing and enigmatic game of manoeuvres between idealism and materialism had already taken place once in history, in other forms (with which Hegel typically identified) two centuries earlier, under astonishing conditions: how could this philosophy of Spinoza have been materialist and critical -- a philosophy terrifying to its own time, which began "not with the spirit, not with the world, but with God", and never deviated from its path, whatever form or appearance of idealism and "dogmatism" it might take on? In Spinoza's anticipation of Hegel we tried to see, and thought that we had succeeded in finding out, under what conditions a philosophy might, in what it said or did not say, and in spite of its form -- or on the contrary, just because of its form, that is, because of the theoretical apparatus of its theses, in short because of

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its positions -- produce effects useful to materialism. Thus, some light would be thrown on what philosophy really is, therefore on what a philosophy is, and on materialism. And then other things would begin to become clear.
I mentioned Hegel and the Great Logic, and not without reason. Hegel begins with Logic, "God before the creation of the world". But as Logic is alienated in Nature, which is alienated in the Spirit, which reaches its end in Logic, there is a circle which turns within itself, without end and without beginning. The first words of the beginning of the Logic tell us: Being is Nothingness. The posited beginning is negated: there is no beginning, therefore no origin. Spinoza for his part begins with God, but in order to deny Him as a Being (Subject) in the universality of His only infinite power (Deus = Natura ). Thus Spinoza, like Hegel, rejects every thesis of Origin, Transcendence or an Unknowable World, even disguised within the absolute interiority of the Essence. But with this difference (for the Spinozist negation is not the Hegelian negation), that within the void of the Hegelian Being there exists, through the negation of the negation, the contemplation of the dialectic of a Telos (Telos = Goal), a dialectic which reaches its Goals in history: those of the Spirit, subjective, objective and absolute, Absolute Presence in transparency. But Spinoza, because he "begins with God", never gets involved with any Goal, which, even when it "makes its way forward" in immanence, is still figure and thesis of transcendence. The detour via Spinoza thus allowed us to make out, by contrast, a radical quality lacking in Hegel. In the negation of the negation, in the Aufhebung ( = transcendence which conserves what it transcends), it allowed us to discover the Goal: the special form and site of the "mystification" of the Hegelian dialectic.
Is it necessary to add that Spinoza refused to use the notion of the Goal, but explained it as a necessary and therefore well-founded illusion? In the Appendix to Book I of the Ethics, and in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, we find in fact what is undoubtedly the first theory of ideology ever thought out, with its three characteristics: (1) its imaginary "reality"; (2) its internal inversion ; (3) its "centre": the illusion of the subject. An abstract theory

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of ideology, it will be said. I agree: but try to find something better before Marx, who himself said little on the subject -- except in The German Ideology, where he said too much. And above all: it is not sufficient to spell out the letter of a theory, one must also see how it operates, that is, since it is always an apparatus of theses, what it refuses and what it accepts. Spinoza's "theory" rejected every illusion about ideology, and especially about the number one ideology of that time, religion, by identifying it as imaginary. But at the same time it refused to treat ideology as a simple error, or as naked ignorance, because it based the system of this imaginary phenomenon on the relation of men to the world "expressed" by the state of their bodies. This materialism of the imaginary opened the way to a surprising conception of the First Level of Knowledge: not at all, in fact, as a "piece of knowledge", but as the material world of men as they live it, that of their concrete and historical existence. Is this a false interpretation? In certain respects, perhaps, but it is possible to read Spinoza in such a way. In fact his categories do function, daringly, in this way in the history of the Jewish people, of its prophets, of its religion, and of its politics, where the primacy of politics over religion stands out clearly, in the first work which, after Machiavelli, offered a theory of history.
But this theory of the imaginary went still further. By its radical criticism of the central category of imaginary illusion, the Subject, it reached into the very heart of bourgeois philosophy, which since the fourteenth century had been built on the foundation of the legal ideology of the Subject. Spinoza's resolute anti-Cartesianism consciously directs itself to this point, and the famous "critical" tradition made no mistake here. On this point too Spinoza anticipated Hegel, but he went further. For Hegel, who criticized all theses of subjectivity, nevertheless found a place for the Subject, not only in the form of the "becoming-Subject of Substance" (by which he "reproaches" Spinoza for "wrongly" taking things no further than Substance), but in the interiority of the Telos of the process without a subject, which by virtue of the negation of the negation, realizes the designs and destiny of the Idea. Thus Spinoza showed us the secret

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alliance between Subject and Goal which "mystifies" the Hegelian dialectic.
I could go on. I will however deal with one last theme: that of the famous "verum index sui et falsi ". I said that it seemed to us to allow a recurrent conception of the "break". But it did not only have that meaning. In affirming that "what is true is the sign of itself and of what is false", Spinoza avoided any problematic which depended on a "criterion of truth ". If you claim to judge the truth of something by some "criterion", you face the problem of the criterion of this criterion -- since it also must be true -- and so on to infinity. Whether the criterion is external (relation of adequacy between mind and thing, in the Aristotelian tradition) or internal (Cartesian self-evidence), in either case the criterion can be rejected: for it only represents a form of Jurisdiction, a Judge to authenticate and guarantee the validity of what is True. And at the same time Spinoza avoids the temptation of talking about the Truth: as a good nominalist (nominalism, as Marx recognized, could then be the antechamber of materialism) Spinoza only talks about what is "true". In fact the idea of Truth and the idea of the Jurisdiction of a Criterion always go together, because the function of the criterion is to identify the Truth of what is true. Once he has set aside the (idealist) temptations of a theory of knowledge, Spinoza then says that "what is true" "identifies itself", not as a Presence but as a Product, in the double sense of the term "product" (result of the work of a process which "discovers " it), as it emerges in its own production. Now this position is not unrelated to the "criterion of practice", a major thesis of Marxist philosophy: for this Marxist "criterion" is not exterior but interior to practice, and since this practice is a process (Lenin insisted on this: practice is not an absolute "criterion" -- only the process is conclusive) the criterion is no form of Jurisdiction; items of knowledge [connaissances ] emerge in the process of their production.
There again, by the contrast between them, Spinoza allows us to perceive Hegel's mistake. Hegel certainly did rule out any criterion of truth, by considering what is true as interior to its process, but he restored the credentials of the Truth as Telos within the process itself, since each

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moment is only ever the "truth of" the moment which precedes it. When, in a provocative formula which took up Lenin's words ("Marx's doctrine is all-powerful because it is true") directed against the dominant pragmatism and every (idealist) idea of Jurisdiction, I "defined" knowledge as "production " and affirmed the interiority of the forms of scientificity to "theoretical practice", I based myself on Spinoza: not in order to provide The answer, but to counter the dominant idealism and, via Spinoza, to open a road where materialism might, if it runs the risk, find something other than words.
It is understandable that, behind these reasonings, we found other theses in Spinoza which supported them, and that we put these to use too, even at the cost of overdoing things.
Spinoza helped us to see that the concepts Subject/Goal constitute the "mystifying side" of the Hegelian dialectic: but is it enough to get rid of them in order to introduce the materialist dialectic of Marxism, by a simple process of subtraction and inversion? That is not at all sure, because, freed of these fetters, the new dialectic can revolve endlessly in the void of idealism, unless it is rooted in new forms, unknown to Hegel, and which can confer on it the status of materialism.
Now, what does Marx demonstrate in the Poverty of Philosophy, in the Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy and in Capital ? Precisely that the functioning of the materialist dialectic is dependent on the apparatus of a kind of Topography [Topique ]. I am alluding to the famous metaphor of the edifice, in which, in order to grasp the reality of a social formation, Marx instals an infrastructure (the economic "structure" or "base") and, above it, a superstructure. I am alluding to the theoretical problems posed by this apparatus: "the determination in the last instance (of the superstructure) by the economy (the infrastructure)", "the relative autonomy of (the elements of) the superstructure", their "action and reaction on the infrastructure", the difference and the unity between determination and domination, etc. And I am alluding to the decisive problem, within the infrastructure for example, of the

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unity of the relations of production and productive forces under the dominance of the relations of production, therefore the problem of the determination by relations on the one hand (you find the trace of this problem everywhere in Marx: cf. the concepts of structure/elements, of position, function, support, etc.) and on the other hand the problem of domination.
Now, we are not talking here about a few formulae which might have slipped from Marx's pen by accident, but about a necessity, something which expresses a position essential to materialism and which must be taken seriously. For nowhere do you see Hegel thinking within the structure of a Topography. It is not that Hegel does not propose topographical distinctions: to take only one example, he does indeed talk about abstract right, subjective right (morality), and objective right (the family, civil society, the State), and talks about them as spheres. But Hegel only ever talks about spheres in order to describe them as "spheres within spheres", about circles in order to describe them as "circles within circles": he only advances topographical distinctions in order later to suspend them, to erase them and to transcend them (Aufhebung ), since "their truth" always, for each of them, lies beyond itself. We know the consequences of this idealist retreat: it is abstract right which comes first! Morality is "the truth of" law! The family, civil society and the State are "the truth of" morality! And, within this last sphere (Sittlichkeit ), civil society (let us say: Marx's infrastructure) is "the truth of" the family! And the State is "the truth of" civil society! The Aufhebung is at work here: Aufhebung of every Topography. But there is worse: the "spheres" which have been introduced are arranged in the order which allows the greatest possibility of this retreat. All the spheres of the Philosophy of Right are only figures of the law, the existence of Liberty. And, in order to "demonstrate" it, Hegel buries the economy between the family and the State, after abstract right and morality. This allows us to glimpse what might come of a dialectic abandoned to the absolute delirium of the negation of the negation: it is a dialectic which, "starting" from Being = Nothingness, itself produces, by the negation of the negation,

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all the figures in which it operates, of which it is the dialectic; it is a dialectic which produces its own "spheres" of existence; it is -- to put it bluntly -- a dialectic which produces its own material substance. A thesis which faithfully transposes and translates the fundamental thesis of bourgeois ideology: it is (the capitalist's) labour which has produced capital.
It is now possible to understand the materialist stamp of the Marxist Topography. The fact that the metaphor of the structure is a metaphor matters little: in philosophy you can only think through metaphors. But through this metaphor we come up against theoretical problems which have nothing metaphorical about them. By the use of his Topography, Marx introduces real, distinct spheres, which only fit together through the mediation of the Aufhebung : "below" is the economic infrastructure, "above" the superstructure, with its different determinations. The Hegelian order is overthrown: the State is always "up above", law is no longer either primary or omnipresent, and the economy is no longer squeezed between the family and the State, its "truth". The position of the infrastructure designates an unavoidable reality: the determination in the last instance by the economic. Because of this, the relation between infrastructure and superstructure no longer has anything to do with the Hegelian relation: "the truth of . . .". The State is indeed always "up above", but not as "the truth of" the economy: in direct contradiction to a relation of "truth", it actually produces a relation of mystification, based in exploitation, which is made possible by force and by ideology.
The conclusion is obvious: the position of the Marxist Topography protects the dialectic against the delirious idealist notion of producing its own material substance : it imposes on it, on the contrary, a forced recognition of the material conditions of its own efficacy. These conditions are related to the definition of the sites (the "spheres"), to their limits, to their mode of determination in the "totality" of a social formation. If it wants to grasp these realities, the materialist dialectic cannot rest satisfied with the residual forms of the Hegelian dialectic. It needs other forms, which cannot be found in the Hegelian dialectic. It is here that Spinoza

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served us as a (sometimes direct, sometimes very indirect) reference: in his effort to grasp a "non-eminent" (that is, non-transcendent) not simply transitive (á la Descartes) nor expressive (á la Leibniz) causality, which would account for the action of the Whole on its parts, and of the parts on the Whole -- an unbounded Whole, which is only the active relation between its parts: in this effort Spinoza served us, though indirectly, as a first and almost unique guide.
A Marxist cannot of course make the detour via Spinoza without paying for it. For the adventure is perilous, and whatever you do, you cannot find in Spinoza what Hegel gave to Marx: contradiction. To take only one example, this "theory of ideology" and this interpretation of the "First Level of Knowledge" as a concrete and historical world of men living (in) the materiality of the imaginary led me directly to the conception (to which The German Ideology can lend support): materiality/imaginary/inversion/ subject: But I saw ideology as the universal element of historical existence: and I did not at that time go any further. Thus I disregarded the difference between the regions of ideology and the antagonistic class tendencies which run through them, divide them, regroup them and bring them into opposition. The absence of "contradiction" was taking its toll: the question of the class struggle in ideology did not appear. Through the gap created by this "theory" of ideology slipped theoreticism: science/ideology. And so on.
But in spite of everything, it seems to me that the benefit was not nil. We wanted to understand Marx's detour via Hegel. We made a detour via Spinoza: looking for arguments for materialism. We found some. And through this detour, unexpected if not unsuspected by many, we were able, if not to pose or to articulate, at least to "raise" (as you might raise an animal, unexpectedly disturbing it) some questions which otherwise might have remained dormant, sleeping the peaceful sleep of the eternally obvious, in the closed pages of Capital. While waiting for others either to show the futility of these questions or to answer them more correctly, we shall continue, you can bet, to be accused of structuralism . . .

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5. On Tendencies in Philosophy

I spoke earlier about a theoreticist error. Now I want to speak of a theoreticist tendency. I used the first term in order not to shirk my duty or spare myself in any way. But the second, if I may say so, has even more damaging implications, because it is correct: an erroneous tendency, or more correctly still, a wrongly oriented, therefore deviant tendency. A deviation. For you can ultimately only talk about an error in philosophy, from a Marxist point of view if you think of philosophy itself in the categories of rationalism (truth/error), that is to say according to non-Marxist philosophical theses. If I simply talked about my philosophical "error", without rectifying this expression by the use of the terms tendency and deviation, I would fall into the trap of the rationalist antithesis between truth and error, and would then be denouncing my past "error" in the name of a "truth" which I now possess: without knowing why I was made a present of it, and without regard to the very special dialectic which is at work in the practice of philosophy, which is not (a) science, but class struggle in theory.[22] Let us advance a thesis: strictly speaking all theoretical errors are scientific ones, in the recurrent relation which links a science to its own prehistory (which remains its contemporary and always accompanies it, its history's Alter Ego). In philosophy we are dealing with tendencies which confront each other on the existing theoretical "battlefield". These tendencies group themselves in the last instance around the antagonism between idealism and materialism, and they "exist" in the form of "philosophies" which realize the tendencies, their variations and their combinations, as a function of class theoretical positions, in which it is the social practices (political ideological, scientific, etc.) which are at stake. Thus, in order to mark this distinction, you have to introduce a category which plays an all-important role in Marxist political practice and theoretical reflexion on philosophical theses and tendencies: the category of correctness. That

22. A formula which I proposed in my Reply to John Lewis.

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is why I proposed (in my Philosophy Course for Scientists, 1967) the express use of this category to characterize the special "nature" of philosophical propositions, theses (or positions : a position which is marked out, thus takes up position, by occupying a position on the basis of and against other positions ), saying: "Philosophy states propositions which are theses: a thesis is said to be correct or not ". You can say the same of tendencies, which are the effect of an apparatus of theses. A tendency is correct or deviant (it follows a correct line or more or less departs from a correct line, even to the point of becoming antagonistic to it). Correctness does not fall from the sky: it has to be worked for, and may involve considerable effort, and it must be continually reworked: there must be adjustment. There is no doubt that philosophy also has a theoretical function, but the question is: of what kind and under what conditions? You would need an extensive treatment of the subject in order to answer this question. The point that I wanted to bring home, and which seems to me, as things are, decisive for Marxism, is not only the "mixed-up" character of the theoretical and practical functions of philosophy, but the primacy of the practical function over the theoretical function in philosophy itself. It was to mark the decisive importance of this position (Thesis) and to clarify the primacy of the practical function that I put forward the thesis: "Philosophy is, in the last instance, class struggle in theory".
Correct theses, correct tendency, deviation . . . These categories allow us to give a quite different account than the rationalist one of what happens in a "philosophy". It is not a Whole, made up of homogeneous propositions submitted to the verdict: truth or error. It is a system of positions (theses), and, through these positions, itself occupies positions in the theoretical class struggle. It takes up these positions in the struggle, with reference to the enemy and against the enemy. But the enemy is also not a unified body: the philosophical battlefield is thus not a reproduction, in the form of opposed "systems", of the simple rationalist antithesis between truth and error. It is not a question of, on the one hand, a homogeneous good side, and on the other a bad side. The positions of the two sides are usually

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mixed up together -- not all enemies are equally enemies, and in the heat of the struggle it is not always easy to identify in the crowd the main enemy, and to recognize that there also exist secondary enemies, which may be fighting for old positions (as if the front line had not changed), or for "partial" or misplaced stakes. It is therefore necessary to fight, if not everywhere at the same time, at least on several fronts, taking account both of the principal tendency and of the secondary tendencies, both of the principal stake and of the secondary stakes, while all the time "working" to occupy correct positions. All this will obviously not come about through the miracle of a consciousness capable of dealing with all problems with perfect clarity. There is no miracle. A Marxist philosopher able to intervene in the theoretical class struggle must start out from positions already recognized and established in the theoretical battles of the history of the Labour Movement -- but he can only understand the existing state of the theoretical and ideological "terrain" if he comes to know it both theoretically and practically: in and through struggle. It may be that in the course of his endeavours, even when he starts out from already established positions in order to attack open or disguised enemies, he will take up positions which in the course of struggle are shown to be deviant positions, out of step with the correct line which he is aiming for. There is nothing astonishing in that. The essential thing is that he should then recognize his deviation and rectify his positions in order to make them more correct.
But let us go further. If it is true that philosophy, "class struggle in theory", is, in the last instance, this interposed conflict between tendencies (idealism and materialism) which Engels, Lenin and Mao spoke about, then since this struggle does not take place in the sky but on the theoretical ground, and since this ground changes its features in the course of history, and since at the same time the question of what is at stake also takes on new forms, you can therefore say that the idealist and materialist tendencies which confront one another in all philosophical struggles, on the field of battle, are never realized in a pure form in any "philosophy" . In every "philosophy", even when it represents as explicitly and "coherently" as possible one of the two great antagonistic

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tendencies, there exist manifest or latent elements of the other tendency. And how could it be otherwise, if the role of every philosophy is to try to besiege the enemy's positions, therefore to interiorize the conflict in order to master it? Now this mastery may escape precisely whoever is trying to establish it. For a simple reason: the fate of philosophical theses does not depend only on the position on which they stand -- because the class struggle in theory is always secondary in relation to the class struggle in general, because there is something outside of philosophy which constitutes it as philosophy, even though philosophy itself certainly does not want to recognize the fact.
That is why both in order to talk about and in order to judge a philosophy it is correct to start out from Mao's categories on contradiction. Now Mao talks above all about politics, even in his philosophical texts -- and in this he is correct, more so than might be imagined -- and he gives reasons for believing what Engels and Lenin suggested, which is the theoretical foundation of the Leninist "materialist reading" not only of Hegel, the absolute idealist, but of all philosophers without exception (including Engels, Lenin and Mao themselves): that in every philosophy, in every philosophical position, you must consider the tendency in its contradiction, and within this contradiction the principal tendency and the secondary tendency of the contradiction, and within each tendency the principal aspect, the secondary aspect, and so on. But it is not a question of an infinite and formal Platonic division. What must be understood is how this division is fixed in a series of meeting-points, in which the political-theoretical conjuncture defines the central meeting-point ("the decisive link") and the secondary meeting-points; or, to change the metaphor: the principal "front" and the secondary "fronts", the main point of attack and defence, the secondary points of attack and defence. This is indeed, in its present form, very schematic, and perhaps even scholastic! "Distinguo", said Molière's philosopher, thus caricaturing division (a major operation in philosophical practice, which by its demarcations realizes a tendency in the struggle) by transforming it into simple distinctions, which establish objects and essences. Lenin's and Mao's

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"distinctions", however, are actually not distinctions, which determine a result, but divisions, the lines of which open up a path. On this basis, work can begin -- the tools are of course always open to improvement -- on a better understanding of what happens in "philosophy" and in "a" philosophy.
Why these general remarks? In order to be able to characterize more adequately than before the "tendency" of my first essays. As far as their principal tendency is concerned, and in spite of the severe criticism which I must make of them, I think that they do in their own way, with the available means and in a precise conjuncture, defend positions useful to Marxist theory and to the proletarian class struggle: against the most threatening forms of bourgeois ideology -- humanism, historicism, pragmatism, evolutionism, philosophical idealism, etc. But as far as their secondary, theoreticist tendency is concerned, these same essays express a deviation harmful to Marxist positions and the class struggle.
But it is not enough to talk about a balance: on the one side/on the other. You must at the same time reassess the effect of the whole, that is, the effects of each tendency on the other and the global result. You can then talk about a contradictory unity (between the principal, basically correct tendency, and the secondary, deviant tendency). Within this unity the theoreticist tendency has not been without consequences for the theses of the principal tendency. The more politically-oriented of my critics saw this: the class struggle does not figure in its own right in For Marx and Reading Capital ; it only makes an appearance when I talk about the practical and social function of ideology; and of course (this is certainly the biggest mistake I made in my essays on Marxist philosophy) there was no mention of class position in theory. But, on the other hand, one can also not ignore, within their contradiction, the effects of the principal (correct) tendency on the secondary (deviant) tendency. Certain of my theoreticist theses, modified by their relation to the principal tendency, and especially those drawn from Spinoza, also played a role in the struggle.
It is not my place to say what the result of this enterprise was, what problems were brought to light, which others

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were clarified, what categories and concepts were proposed which perhaps allowed us a better understanding of what is offered and reserved to us by the extraordinary theory bearing the name of Marx. But I think that I can say that a "front" was opened; and that even if it was not held and defended all along the line in the same manner, with equally correct arguments, it remains true that in its essentials (as far as the principal tendency was concerned) it was held on the basis of dialectical-materialist principles. My opponents did certainly recognize the weak points. And even if they were not able to take an "overall view" (for some of them this did not matter), they did turn to their advantage those details which could be so used, and the rest they invented. It was a fair fight. But, what is more important, certain of the theses which we attacked were forced to retreat: for example, the humanist and historicist theses, etc.
But now that I have learned the lesson of "practice", and knowing, as Lenin said, that it is more serious not to recognize an error than simply to commit it, I can look to the past, reassess my theses in the light of the contradiction which haunted them, and "sort things out".
There are theses which obviously must be got rid of, because, in their existing state, they are false (wrongly oriented) and therefore harmful. For example the definition of philosophy as "Theory of theoretical practice" seems to me quite indefensible, and must be done away with. And it is not enough to suppress a formula: it is a question of rectifying, within their theoretical apparatus, all the effects and echoes of its reverberation. In the same way, the category of "theoretical practice", which was very useful in another context, is nevertheless dangerous in its ambiguity, since it uses one and the same term to cover both scientific practice and philosophical practice, and thus induces the idea that philosophy can be (a) science: but in a context which does not cause the ambiguity to become speculative confusion, this category may still, on occasion, play a role, since it serves as a materialist reminder to "theory" of practice. As far as the antithesis science/ideology is concerned, I have said enough about it for it to be understood that in its general, rationalist-speculative form, it must be rejected,

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and "reworked" from another point of view, which must split it up into the elements of the complex process of the "production" of knowledge, where the class conflicts of the practical ideologies combine with the theoretical ideologies, the existing sciences and philosophy.
But there are other theses and categories which can, even in their old form, render theoretical and political services in struggle and in research, though they may sometimes have to be displaced, even if imperceptibly (Lenin's "shades of opinion"), and inserted into a more correct theoretical apparatus: a better adjusted one. I will not go through all the examples now: anyone who wishes may work out the proof. The whole point is that the guide marks of the theoretical class struggle must be taken seriously, so that it is easier to recognize and to know the class enemy -- that is, on the existing theoretical terrain (which itself must be better grasped) the philosophical enemies -- and possible to take up more correct theoretical class positions, in order to hold and defend a better adjusted front.
What was essentially lacking in my first essays was the class struggle and its effects in theory -- to realize this is to allow certain of the categories which I began with to be replaced in (more) correct positions. An example, to return to it for a moment, is the famous "break". I want to keep it in service, using the same term, but displacing it, or rather assigning it a place on the firm ground of the front of dialectical materialism, instead of letting it float dangerously in the atmosphere of a perilously idealist rationalism. But what does it mean to talk about assigning it a place in a better adjusted apparatus? It means, above all, to recognize -- which I failed to do -- that if there is indeed something at stake here, in connexion with those specific and indisputable facts of which the break is the index, this break is itself not the last word in the affair. For not only must it be admitted that the break does not explain itself, since it actually only records the simple fact that certain symptoms and effects were produced by a certain theoretical event, the historical appearance of a new science; it must also be said that this event in theoretical history has to be explained by the conjunction of the material, technical, social, political

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and ideological conditions which determine it. And, among these conditions, the most important in certain cases, and indisputably in the case of Marx, is the intervention of class theoretical positions, or what could be called the intervention of the philosophical "instance".[23]
In the case of Marxist theory, the event which can be called a "break", as I defined it above, in fact seems to have been produced like a "fatherless child" by the meeting of what Lenin called the Three Main Sources, or, to use a more accurate term, by the intersection or conjunction, against the background of the class struggles of 1840-48 (in which the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat was more important than the historical class struggle between the feudal class and the bourgeoisie), of lines of demarcation and of extremely complex theoretical and ideological lineages, which, aimlessly and each for itself, criss-cross in the resultant field of their intersection.
Now it is possible and necessary to distinguish as dominant in this contradictory process what we might call the change in the class theoretical position of the historical "individual" Marx-Engels. This change of class theoretical position took place, under the influence of the political class struggles and of their lessons, in philosophy. This claim is not at all strange if, as I suggest, philosophy really is, in the last instance, class struggle in theory.
I must insist on this point: in fact it takes me directly back to my first essays. At that time I said: the essential question is that of Marxist philosophy. I still think so. But, if I did see (in 1960-65) what the essential question was, I now see that I did not understand it very well . . . I defined philosophy as "Theory of theoretical practice", thus con-

23. Again a precise example. I am indeed using the term instance intentionally. This again is a category which, until a better adapted one comes along, must be kept in use but put to work in its right place. Now recently a wind has been blowing, among Communist philosophers, strong enough to turn every instance upside-down . . . But just because some use the term "instance" on every menu, whether it has any relevance or not, we do not need to follow them. For my pan, I certainly did make a rather free use of "instances", because at the time I had nothing better; and I will now stop talking about the "economic instance", but will maintain the valuable term of instance for the Superstructure: the State, Law and Philosophy.

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ferring on it, by the use of the single term "theory", the same status as a science. In theoretically overestimating philosophy, I underestimated it politically, as those who correctly accused me of not "bringing in" the class struggle were quick to point out. Another proof of this is the introduction, in Lenin and Philosophy, where I did rectify the essential point of my deviation in proposing a new definition of philosophy ("politics in theory"), of the system of "double, equal representation" at the level of the Sciences and of Politics, and the Thesis borrowed, not accidentally, from Hegel: philosophy always rises when dusk has fallen, in the historical period following a unique event -- not the event of a political-ideological revolution, but the event of the birth or modification of the Sciences themselves. This was still an improvised solution, that is, a semi-compromise, which, while making some allowance for the events of the history of the sciences and for the philosophical reactions to them, did not really do them justice, because a priori it did them justice too well. If I now propose a different formula: "philosophy is, in the last instance, class struggle in theory", it is precisely in order to be able to give both the class struggle (the last instance) and the other social practices (among them scientific practice) their due in their "relation" to philosophy.
On this basis, new fields of research are opened up.

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On the Evolution
of the
Young Marx

I.
If I were asked to sum up in a few words the essential Thesis which I wanted to defend in my philosophical essays, I would say: Marx founded a new science, the science of History. I would add: this scientific discovery is a theoretical and political event unprecedented in human history. And I would specify: this event is irreversible.
A theoretical event. Before Marx, what one could call the "History Continent" was occupied by ideological conceptions derived from the religious, moral or legal-political sphere -- in short, by philosophies of history. These claimed to offer a representation of what happens in societies and in history. In fact they only succeeded in masking, within distorting and misleading concepts, the mechanisms which really do govern societies and history. This mystification was not an accident: it was linked to their function. These conceptions were in fact only the theoretical detachment of practical ideologies (religion, morality, legal ideology, politics, etc.) whose essential function is to reproduce the relations of production ( = of exploitation) in class societies. Marx "opened" the "History Continent" by breaking with these ideological conceptions. He opened it: by the principles of historical materialism, by Capital and his other works. He opened it: for, as Lenin says, Marx only laid the "corner-stones" of an immense domain which his successors continued to exploit, and the vast extent of the field and the new problems posed demand an unremitting effort.
A political event. For Marx's scientific discovery has been since the very beginning and has become more and

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more the object and the stake of a fierce and implacable class struggle. When he demonstrated that human history is the history of class societies, therefore of exploitation and of class domination, and thus finally of class struggle, when he demonstrated the mechanisms of exploitation and of capitalist domination, Marx collided directly with the interests of the ruling classes. Their ideologists let fly against him, and even now are still intensifying their attacks. But the exploited classes, and above all the workers, recognized "their" truth in Marx's scientific theory: they adopted it, and made it a weapon in their revolutionary class struggle. This recognition bears a name in history: it is the Union (or, as Lenin said, the Fusion) of the Labour Movement and Marxist Theory. This Encounter, this Union, this Fusion, have never taken place spontaneously or easily. For the Labour Movement, which existed long before the appearance and spread of Marxist theory, came under the influence of petty-bourgeois ideological conceptions, like utopian socialism, anarchism, etc. A great deal of work and a very long ideological and political struggle were needed before the Union could take place and acquire a historical existence. The very conditions of its realization and existence mean that this Union cannot be a once-and-for-all victory. It does not exist in isolation from the class struggle, and must be incessantly defended in the course of a bitter class struggle against the deviations and crises which threaten it: the evidence is the treachery, yesterday, of the Second International, and today the split in the International Communist Movement.
One fact is indisputable: for a hundred years the whole history of humanity has depended on the Union of the Labour Movement (and of the oppressed peoples) and Marxist Theory (which became Marxist-Leninist Theory). We only need to step back a little to see that, in different but convergent forms, this reality now easily dominates the scene of world history: the struggle of the proletariat and of the oppressed peoples against Imperialism. This fact is irreversible.

II.
We could satisfy ourselves with these remarks. But if we

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wish (whatever our place in this struggle) to advance in the exploration of the "History Continent", or (what, in one precise respect, comes to the same thing) to arrive at an active understanding of the forms of the present-day proletarian class struggle, we must go further. We must ask ourselves: under what conditions was Marx's scientific discovery possible?
This question may look like a detour. But it is not. It may look like a theoretical question. In fact it has political implications which are clearly vital.

III.
When in my earlier essays I showed that Marx's scientific discovery represented a "break" [coupure or rupture ] with previous ideological conceptions of history, what did I do? What did I do when I spoke of a "break" between science and ideology? What did I do when I spoke of ideology?
I developed a formal analysis, whose significance must now be indicated and whose limits must be traced.
Above all, I arrived at a conclusion. I took cognizance of a fact, of a theoretical event: the appearance of a scientific theory of History in a domain hitherto occupied by conceptions which I called ideological. Let us leave aside for a moment this description: ideological.
I showed that there existed an irreducible difference between Marx's theory and these conceptions. To prove it, I compared their conceptual content and their mode of functioning.
Their conceptual content : I showed that Marx had replaced the old basic concepts (which I called notions) of the philosophies of History with absolutely new, unheard-of concepts, not to be found in the old conceptions. Where the philosophies of History talked about man, the economic subject, need, the system of needs, civil society, alienation, theft, injustice, spirit, liberty -- where they talked about "society" itself -- Marx began to talk about the mode of production, social formation, infrastructure, superstructure, ideologies, classes, class struggle, etc. I concluded that there was no continuity (even in the case of Classical Political Economy) between

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the system of Marxist concepts and the system of pre-Marxist notions. This absence of a relation of continuity, this theoretical difference, this dialectical "leap", I called an "epistemological break" [coupure or rupture ].
Their mode of functioning : I showed that in practice Marxist theory functioned quite differently from the old pre-Marxist conceptions. It seemed to me that the system of basic concepts of Marxist theory functioned like the "theory" of a science: as a "basic" conceptual apparatus, opened to the "infinitude" (Lenin) of its object, that is, designed ceaselessly to pose and confront new problems and ceaselessly to produce new pieces of knowledge. Let us say: it functioned as a (provisional) truth, for the (endless) conquest of new knowledge, itself capable (in certain conjunctures) of renewing this first truth. In comparison, it appeared that the basic theory of the old conceptions, far from functioning as a (provisional) truth, for the production of new pieces of knowledge, actually tried in practice to operate as the truth of History, as complete, definitive and absolute knowledge of History, in short as a closed system, excluding development because lacking an object in the scientific sense of the term, and thus only ever finding in reality its own mirror reflection. Here too I concluded that there was a radical difference between Marx's theory and earlier conceptions, and I talked about the "epistemological break" [coupure or rupture ].
Finally, I called these earlier conceptions ideological, and understood the "epistemological break", the proof of which I had established, as a theoretical discontinuity between Marxist science on the one hand, and its ideological prehistory on the other. I should specify: not between science in general and ideology in general, but between Marxist science and its own ideological prehistory.
But what allowed me to say that the pre-Marxist conceptions were ideological? Or, what comes to the same thing, what sense did I give to the term ideology ?
An ideological conception does not carry the inscription ideology on its forehead or on its heart, whatever sense you give to the word. On the contrary, it presents itself as the Truth. It can only be identified from outside, after the event: from the standpoint of the existence of a Marxist science

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of History. I repeat: not simply from the standpoint of the existence of Marxist science as science, but from the standpoint of Marxist science as the science of History.
In fact, every science, as soon as it arises in the history of theories and is shown to be a science, causes its own theoretical prehistory, with which it breaks, to appear as quite erroneous, false, untrue. That is how it treats it in practice: and this treatment is a moment in its history. Nevertheless there always exist philosophers who will draw edifying conclusions; who will draw out of this recurrent (retrospective) practice an idealist theory of the opposition between Truth and Error, between Knowledge and Ignorance, and even (provided that the term "ideology" is taken in a non-Marxist sense) between Science and Ideology, in general.
This effect of recurrence (retrospection) is also a factor in the case of Marxist science: when this science appears, it necessarily shows up its own prehistory as erroneous, but at the same time it also shows it up a

Contents [ Part 2 ]
2. Elements of Self-Criticism	101
[Forward]	[102]
Elements of Self-Criticism	105
On the Evolution of the Young Marx	151
3. Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy?	163
"Something New"	208
Bibliography	217
Index	222