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Louis Althusser
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V E R S O
London - New York
1990
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Contents
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Introduction |
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Theory, Theoretical Practice and Theoretical Formation: |
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On Theoretical Work: Difficulties and Resources |
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*Théorie, practique théorique et formation théorique.
Idéologie et lutte idéologique,
April 1965.
Unpublished typescript.
Translated by James H. Kavanagh
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These reflections are designed to present, in as clear and systematic a form as possible, the theoretical principles that found and guide the practice of Communists in the domain of theory and ideology.
1. Marxism is a Scientific Doctrine
A famous title of Engels's underscores the essential distinction between Marxism and previous socialist doctrines: before Marx, socialist doctrines were merely utopian ; Marx's doctrine is scientific.[1] What is a utopian socialist doctrine? It is a doctrine which proposes socialist goals for human action, yet which is based on non-scientific principles, deriving from religious, moral or juridical, i.e. ideological, principles. The ideological nature of its theoretical foundation is decisive, because it affects how any socialist doctrine conceives of not only the ends of socialism, but also the means of action required to realize these ends. Thus, utopian socialist doctrine defines the ends of socialism - the socialist society of the future - by moral and juridical categories; it speaks of the reign of equality and the brotherhood of man; and it translates these moral and legal principles into utopian - that is, ideological, ideal and imaginary - economic principles as well: for example, the complete sharing-out of the products of labour among the workers, economic egalitarianism, the negation of all economic law, the immediate disappearance of the State, etc. In the same manner it defines utopian, ideological and imaginary economic and political means as the appropriate means to realize socialism: in the economic domain, the workers' co-operatives of Owen, the phalanstery of Fourier's disciples, Proudhon's people's bank; in the political domain, moral education and reform - if not the Head of State's conversion to socialism. In constructing an ideological representation of the ends as well as the means of socialism, utopian socialist doctrines are, as Marx clearly showed, prisoners of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois economic, juridical, moral and political principles. That is why they cannot really break with the
bourgeois system, they cannot be genuinely revolutionary. They remain anarchist or reformist. Content, in fact, to oppose the bourgeois politico-economic system with bourgeois (moral, juridical) principles, they are trapped - whether they like it or not - within the bourgeois system. They can never break out towards revolution.
1. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, vol. 3, Moscow 1970, pp. 95-151. [Ed.]
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Marxist doctrine, by contrast, is scientific. This means that it is not content to apply existing bourgeois moral and juridical principles (liberty, equality, fraternity, justice, etc.) to the existing bourgeois reality in order to criticize it, but that it criticizes these existing bourgeois moral and juridical principles, as well as the existing politico-economic system. Thus its general critique rests on other than existing ideological principles (religious, moral and juridical); it rests on the scientific knowledge of the totality of the existing bourgeois system, its politico-economic as well as its ideological systems. It rests on the knowledge of this ensemble, which constitutes an organic totality of which the economic, political, and ideological are organic 'levels' or 'instances', articulated with each other according to specific laws. It is this knowledge that allows us to define the objectives of socialism, and to conceive socialism as a new determinate mode of production which will succeed the capitalist mode of production, to conceptualize its specific determinations, the precise form of its relations of production, its political and ideological superstructure. It is this knowledge that permits us to define the appropriate means of action for 'making the revolution', means based upon the nature of historical necessity and historical development, on the determinant role of the economy in the last instance on this development, on the decisive role of class struggle in socioeconomic transformations, and on the role of consciousness and organization in political struggle. It is the application of these scientific principles that has led to the definition of the working class as the only radically revolutionary class, the definition of the forms of organization appropriate to the economic and political struggle (role of the unions; nature and role of the party comprised of the vanguard of the working class) - the definition, finally, of the forms of ideological struggle. It is the application of these scientific principles that has made possible the break not only with the reformist objectives of utopian socialist doctrines, but also with their forms of organization and struggle. It is the application of these scientific principles that has allowed the definition of a revolutionary tactics and strategy whose irreversible first results are henceforth inscribed in world history, and continue to change the world.
In 'Our Programme', Lenin writes:
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| We take our stand entirely on the Marxist theoretical position: Marxism was the first to transform socialism from a utopia into a science, to lay a firm |
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| foundation for this science, and to indicate the path that must be followed in further developing and elaborating it in all its parts. It disclosed the nature of modern capitalist economy by explaining how the hire of labour, the purchase of labour-power, conceals the enslavement of millions of propertyless people by a handful of capitalists, the owners of the land, factories, mines, and so forth. It showed that all modern capitalist development displays the tendency of large-scale production to eliminate petty production and creates conditions that make a socialist system of society possible and necessary. It taught us how to discern - beneath the pall of rooted customs, political intrigues, abstruse laws, and intricate doctrines - the class struggle, the struggle between the propertied classes in all their variety and the propertyless mass, the proletariat, which is at the head of all the propertyless. It made clear the real task of a revolutionary socialist party: not to draw up plans for refashioning society, not to preach to the capitalists and their hangers-on about improving the lot of the workers, not to hatch conspiracies, but to organize the class struggle of the proletariat and to lead this struggle, the ultimate aim of which is the conquest of political power by the proletariat and the organization of a socialist society.[2] |
And, having condemned the Bernsteinian revisionists who 'have . . . not . . . advanced . . . by a single step . . . the science which Marx and Engels enjoined us to develop', Lenin adds:
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| There can be no strong socialist party without a revolutionary theory which unites all socialists, from which they draw all their convictions, and which they apply in their methods of struggle and means of action.[3] |
From one end of Lenin's work to the other, the same theme is tirelessly repeated: 'without revolutionary theory , no revolutionary practice' .[4] And this revolutionary theory is exclusively defined as the scientific theory produced by Marx, to which he gave most profound form in his 'life's work' - the work without which, says Engels, we would still ' be groping in the dark ': Capital.[5]
2. Marx's Double Scientific Doctrine
Once we advance the principle that the revolutionary action of Communists is based on scientific Marxist theory, the following question must be addressed: what is Marxist scientific doctrine?
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Marxist scientific doctrine presents the specific peculiarity of being composed of two scientific disciplines, united for reasons of principle but actually distinct from one another because their objects are distinct: historical materialism and dialectical materialism.
Historical materialism is the science of history. We can define it more precisely as the science of modes of production, their specific structure, their constitution, their functioning, and the forms of transition whereby one mode of production passes into another. Capital represents the scientific theory of the capitalist mode of production. Marx did not provide a developed theory of other modes of production - that of primitive communities, the slave, 'Asiatic', 'Germanic', feudal, socialist, and Communist modes of production - but only some clues, some outlines of these modes of production. Nor did Marx furnish a theory of the forms of transition from one determinate mode of production to another, only some clues and outlines. The most developed of these outlines concerns the forms of transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production (the section of Capital devoted to primitive accumulation, and numerous other passages). We also possess some precious, if rare, indications concerning aspects of the forms of transition from the capitalist to the socialist mode of production (in particular, the 'Critique of the Gotha Programme', where Marx insists on the phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat). The first phase of these forms of transition is the object of numerous reflections by Lenin (State and Revolution, and all his texts of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary period). In fact, the scientific knowledge in these texts directly governs all economic, political and ideological action directed towards the 'construction of socialism'.
A further clarification is necessary concerning historical materialism. The theory of history - a theory of the different modes of production - is, by all rights, the science of the organic totality that every social formation arising from a determinate mode of production constitutes. Now, as Marx showed, every social totality comprises the articulated ensemble of the different levels of this totality: the economic infrastructure, the politico-juridical superstructure, and the ideological superstructure. The theory of history, or historical materialism, is the theory of the specific nature of this totality - of the set of its levels, and of the type of articulation and determination that unifies them and forms the basis both of their dependence vis-à-vis the economic level - 'determinant in the last instance ' - and their degree of 'relative autonomy' . It is because each of these levels possesses this 'relative autonomy' that it can be objectively considered as a 'partial whole ', and become the object of a relatively independent scientific treatment. This is why, taking account of this 'relative autonomy', one can legitimately
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study the economic 'level', or the political 'level', or this or that ideological, philosophical, aesthetic or scientific formation of a given mode of production, separately. This specification is very important, because it is the basis of the possibility of a theory of the history (relatively autonomous, and of a degree of variable autonomy according to the case) of the levels or the respective realities - a theory of the history of politics, for example, or of philosophy, art, the sciences, etc.
This is also the basis of a relatively autonomous theory of the 'economic level' of a given mode of production. Capital, as it is offered to us in its incompleteness (Marx also wanted to analyse the law, the State, and the ideology of the capitalist mode of production therein), precisely represents the scientific analysis of the 'economic level' of the capitalist mode of production ; this is why Capital is generally and correctly considered as, above all, the theory of the economic system of the capitalist mode of production. But as this theory of the economic 'level' of the capitalist mode of production necessarily presupposes, if not a developed theory, at least some adequate theoretical elements for other 'levels' of the capitalist mode of production (the juridico-political and ideological levels), Capital is not limited to the 'economy' alone. It far exceeds the economy, in accordance with the Marxist conception of the reality of the economy, which can be understood in its concept, defined and analysed only as a level, a part, a partial whole organically inscribed in the totality of the mode of production under consideration. This is why one finds in Capital fundamental theoretical elements for the elaboration of a theory of the other levels (political, ideological) of the capitalist mode of production. These elements are certainly undeveloped, but adequate for guiding us in the theoretical study of the other levels. In the same way one finds in Capital, even as it proposes to analyse only 'the capitalist mode of production', theoretical elements concerning the knowledge of other modes of production, and of the forms of transition between different modes of production - elements that are certainly undeveloped, but adequate for guiding us in the theoretical study of these matters.
Such, very schematically presented, is the nature of the first of the two sciences founded by Marx: historical materialism.
In founding this science of history, at the same time Marx founded another scientific discipline: dialectical materialism, or Marxist philosophy. Yet here there appears a de facto difference. Whereas Marx was able to develop historical materialism very considerably, he was not able to do the same for dialectical materialism, or Marxist philosophy. He was able only to lay its foundations, either in rapid sketches (Theses on Feuerbach ) or in polemical texts (The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy ), or again in a very dense methodological text
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(the unpublished Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1857) and in some passages of Capital (particularly the Postface to the second German edition). It was the demands of the ideological struggle on the terrain of philosophy that led Engels (Anti-Dühring, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy ) and Lenin (Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Philosophical Notebooks, the latter unpublished by Lenin) to develop at greater length the principles of dialectical materialism outlined by Marx. Yet none of these texts, not even those by Engels and Lenin - which are also, essentially, polemical or interpretative texts (Lenin's Notebooks ) - displays a degree of elaboration and systematicity - and hence scientificity - in the least comparable to the degree of elaboration of historical materialism that we possess in Capital. As in the case of historical materialism, it is necessary carefully to distinguish between what has been given to us and what has not, so as to take stock of what remains to be done
Dialectical materialism, or Marxist philosophy, is a scientific discipline distinct from historical materialism. The distinction between these two scientific disciplines rests on the distinction between their objects. The object of historical materialism is constituted by the modes of production, their constitution and their transformation. The object of dialectical materialism is constituted by what Engels calls 'the history of thought ', or what Lenin calls the history of the 'passage from ignorance to knowledge ', or what we can call the history of the production of knowledges - or yet again, the historical difference between ideology and science, or the specific difference of scientificity - all problems that broadly cover the domain called by classical philosophy the 'theory of knowledge'. Of course, this theory can no longer be, as it was in classical philosophy, a theory of the formal, atemporal conditions of knowledge, a theory of the cogito (Descartes, Husserl), a theory of the a priori forms of the human mind (Kant), or a theory of absolute knowledge (Hegel). From the perspective of Marxist theory, it can only be a theory of the history of knowledge - that is, of the real conditions (material and social on the one hand, internal to scientific practice on the other) of the process of production of knowledge. The 'theory of knowledge', thus understood, constitutes the heart of Marxist philosophy. Studying the real conditions of the specific practice that produces knowledges, Marxist philosophical theory is necessarily led to define the nature of non-scientific or pre-scientific practices, the practices of ideological 'ignorance' (ideological practice), and all the real practices upon which scientific practice is founded and to which it is related - the practice of the transformation of social relations, or political practice; and the practice of the transformation of nature, or economic practice. This last practice puts man in relation to nature, which is the material condition
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of his biological and social existence.
Like any scientific discipline, Marxist philosophy presents itself in two forms: a theory which expresses the rational system of its theoretical concepts; and a method which expresses the relation the theory maintains with its object in its application to that object. Of course, theory and method are deeply united, constituting but two sides of the same reality: the scientific discipline in its very life. But it is important to distinguish them, in order to avoid either a dogmatic interpretation (pure theory) or a methodological interpretation (pure method) of dialectical materialism. In dialectical materialism, it can very schematically be said that it is materialism which represents the aspect of theory, and dialectics which represents the aspect of method. But each of these terms includes the other. Materialism expresses the effective conditions of the practice that produces knowledge - specifically: (1) the distinction between the real and its knowledge (distinction of reality), correlative of a correspondence (adequacy) between knowledge and its object (correspondence of knowledge); and (2) the primacy of the real over its knowledge, or the primacy of being over thought. None the less, these principles themselves are not 'eternal' principles, but the principles of the historical nature of the process in which knowledge is produced. That is why materialism is called dialectical : dialectics, which expresses the relation that theory maintains with its object, expresses this relation not as a relation of two simply distinct terms but as a relation within a process of transformation, thus of real production.
This is what is affirmed when it is said that dialectics is the law of transformation, the law of the development of real processes (natural and social processes, as well as the process of knowledge). It is in this sense that the Marxist dialectic can only be materialist, because it does not express the law of a pure imaginary or thought process but the law of real processes, which are certainly distinct and 'relatively autonomous' according to the level of reality considered, but which are all ultimately based on the processes of material nature. That Marxist materialism is necessarily dialectical is what distinguishes it from all previous materialist philosophies. That Marxist dialectics is necessarily materialist is what distinguishes the Marxist dialectic from all idealist dialects, particularly Hegelian dialectics. Whatever historical connections might be invoked between Marxist materialism and anterior 'metaphysical' or mechanical materialisms, on the one hand, and between Marxist and Hegelian dialectics, on the other, there exists a fundamental difference in kind between Marxist philosophy and all other philosophies. In founding dialectical materialism, Marx accomplished as revolutionary a work in philosophy as he effected in the domain of history by founding historical materialism.
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3. Problems Posed by the Existence of these Two Disciplines
The existence of these two scientific disciplines - historical materialism and dialectical materialism - raises two questions: (1) Why did the foundation of historical materialism necessarily entail the foundation of dialectical materialism? (2) What is the proper function of dialectical materialism?
1. Very schematically, it can be said that the foundation of historical materialism, or the science of history, necessarily provoked the foundation of dialectical materialism for the following reason. We know that in the history of human thought, the foundation of an important new science has always more or less overtumed and renewed existing philosophy. This applies to Greek mathematics, which to a great extent provoked the recasting that led to Platonic philosophy; to modem physics, which provoked the recastings that led first to the philosophy of Descartes (after Galileo), then of Kant (after Newton); and also to the invention of infinitesimal calculus, which to a great extent provoked Leibniz's philosophical recasting, and the mathematical logic that put Husserl on the road to his system of Transcendental Phenomenology. We can say that the same process occurred with Marx, and that the foundation of the science of history induced the foundation of a new philosophy.
We must go further, however, to show how Marxist philosophy occupies a privileged place in the history of philosophy, and how it has transformed philosophy from the condition of an ideology into a scientific discipline. In fact, Marx was in some sense compelled, by an implacable logic, to found a radically new philosophy, because he was the first to have thought scientifically the reality of history, which all other philosophies were incapable of doing. Thinking the reality of history scientifically, Marx was obliged, and able, to situate and treat philosophies - for the first time - as realities which, while aiming for 'truth', while speaking of the conditions of knowledge, belong none the less to history, not only because they are conditioned by it but also because they play a social role in it. Whether idealist or materialist, classical philosophies were incapable of thinking about their own history: either the simple fact that they appeared at a determinate moment in history; or, what is much more important, the fact that they have an entire history behind them and are produced in large part by this past history, by the relation of properly philosophical history to the history of the sciences and the other social practices.
Once a genuine knowledge of history had finally been produced, philosophy could no longer ignore, repress or sublimate its relation to
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history; it had to take account of, and think about, this relation. By means of a theoretical revolution it had to become a new philosophy, capable of thinking - in philosophy itself - its real relation to history, as well as its relation to the truth. The old philosophies of consciousness, of the transcendental subject - just like the dogmatic philosophies of absolute knowledge - were no longer possible philosophically. A new philosophy was necessary, one capable of thinking the historical insertion of philosophy in history, its real relation to scientific and social practices (political, economic, ideological), while taking account of the knowledge-relation it maintains with its object. It is this theoretical necessity that gave birth to dialectical materialism, the only philosophy that treats knowledge as the historical process of production of knowledges and that reflects its new object at once within materialism and within dialectics. Other transformations in philosophy were always based upon either the ideological negation of the reality of history, its sublimation in God (Plato, Descartes, Leibniz), or an ideological conception of history as the realization of philosophy itself (Kant, Hegel, Husserl): they were never able to attain the reality of history, which they always misunderstood or left aside. If the transformation imposed on philosophy by Marx is genuinely revolutionary from a philosophical point of view, this is because it took the reality of history seriously for the first time in history, and this simple difference comprehensively overturned the bases of existing philosophy.
2. As for the proper function of philosophy, and its absolute necessity for Marxism, this too is based on profound theoretical reasons. Lenin expounded them very clearly in Materialism and Empirio-criticism. He showed that philosophy always played a fundamental theoretical role in the constitution and development of knowledge, and that Marxist philosophy simply resumed this role on its own account, but with means that were, in principle, infinitely purer and more fertile. We know that knowledge - in its strong sense, scientific knowledge - is not born and does not develop in isolation, protected by who-knows-what miracle from the influences of the surrounding world. Among these are social and political influences which may intervene directly in the life of the sciences, and very seriously compromise the course of their development, if not their very existence. We are aware of numerous historical examples. But there are less visible influences that are just as pernicious, if not still more dangerous, because they generally pass unnoticed: these are ideological influences. It was in breaking with the existing ideologies of history - at the end of a very arduous critical labour - that Marx was able to found the theory of history; and we know, too - from Engels's struggle against Dühring and Lenin's against the disciples of Mach -
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that, once founded by Marx, the theory of history did not escape the onslaught of ideologies, did not escape their influence and assaults.
philosophical character: that is, to the direct or indirect influence of distorting philosophies, of ideological philosophies. In Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Lenin clearly demonstrated this, affirming that the raison d'ê:tre of dialectical materialism was precisely to furnish principles that enable us to distinguish ideology from science, thus to unearth the traps of ideology, in interpretations of historical materialism as well. In this way, he demonstrated that what he calls 'partisanship in philosophy' - that is, the refusal of all ideology, and the precise consciousness of the theory of scientificity - was an absolutely imperative requirement for the very existence and development not only of the natural sciences but of the social sciences, and above all of historical materialism. It has aptly been said that Marxism is a 'guide to action'.[7] It can act as this 'guide' because it is not a false but a true guide, because it is a science - and for this reason alone. Let us say, with all the precautions required by this comparison, that in many circumstances the sciences also require a 'guide', not a false but a true guide; and among them, historical materialism itself has a vital need for this 'guide'. This 'guide' is dialectical materialism. And since there is no other 'guide' over and above dialectical materialism, we can understand why Lenin attributed an absolutely decisive importance to the adoption of a scientific position on philosophy; we can understand why dialectical materialism demands the highest consciousness and the strictest scientific rigour, the most careful theoretical vigilance: because it is the last possible recourse in the theoretical domain - at least for men and women who, like us, are liberated from religious myths of divine omniscience, or their profane version: dogmatism.
4. Nature of a Science, Constitution of a Science,
If, as we think, Marx's doctrine is a scientific doctrine, if all the goals and all the means of action of Communists are based on the application of the results of Marx's scientific theories, our first duty clearly concerns the science that furnishes us with the means to understand the reality of the historical world and to transform it.
by the nature of a science, its constitution, its life, i.e. its development.
1. To know what a science is, is above all to know how it is constituted, how it is produced : by an immense, specific theoretical labour, by an irreplaceable, extremely long, arduous and difficult theoretical practice.
In fact, every science - natural as well as social - is constantly submitted to the onslaught of existing ideologies, and particularly to that most disarming - because apparently non-ideological - ideology wherein the scientist 'spontaneously' reflects his/her own practice: 'empiricist' or 'positivist' ideology. As Engels once said, every scientist, whether he wants to or not, inevitably adopts a philosophy of science, and therefore cannot do without philosophy. The problem, then, is to know which philosophy he must have at his side: an ideology which deforms his scientific practice, or a scientific philosophy that accounts for it? An ideology that enthrals him to his errors and illusions, or, on the contrary, a philosophy that frees him from them and permits him really to master his own practice? The answer is not in doubt. This is what justifies the essential role of Marxist philosophy in regard to all knowledge: if based upon a false representation of the conditions of scientific practice, and of the relation of scientific practice to other practices, any science risks slowing its advance, if not getting caught in an impasse, or finally taking its own specific crises of development for crises of science as such - and thereby furnishing arguments for every conceivable kind of ideological and religious exploitation. (We have some recent examples with the 'crisis of modern physics' analysed by Lenin.[6]) Furthermore, when a science is in the process of being born, there is a risk that it will put the ideology in which it is steeped into the service of its bad habits. We have some striking examples with the so-called human sciences, which are all too often merely techniques, blocked in their development by the empiricist ideology that dominates them, prevents them from perceiving their real foundation, defining their object, or even finding their basic principles in existing disciplines which are rejected because of ideological prohibitions or prejudices (like historical materialism, which should serve as the foundation of most of the human sciences).
What goes for the sciences holds in the first place for historical materialism itself, which is a science among others and holds no privilege of immunity in this matter. It too is constantly threatened by the dominant ideology, and we know the result: the different forms of revisionism which - in principle, and whatever form they take (economic, political, social, theoretical) - are always related to deviations of a
6. In Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Collected Works, vol. 14, Moscow 1962, chapter 5. [Ed.]
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Development of a Science, Scientific Research
We thus have a categorical duty to treat Marx's theory (in its two domains: historical materialism, dialectical materialism) as what it is - a true science. In other words, we must be fully aware of what is implied
7. A standard characterization of Marxism in the ranks of the Third International. [Ed.]
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Today, this duty involves some specific demands. We are no longer in Marx's position, quite simply because we no longer have to do the prodigious work that he accomplished. Marxist theory exists for us first of all as a result, contained in a certain number of theoretical works and present in its political and social applications.
In an existing science, the theoretical work that produced it is no longer visible to the naked eye ; it has completely passed into the science as constituted. There is a hidden danger here, because we may be tempted to treat constituted Marxist science as a given or as a set of finished truths - in short, to fashion an empiricist or dogmatic conception of science. We may consider it as an absolute, finished knowledge, which poses no problem of development or research; and then we shall be treating it in a dogmatic fashion. We may also - in so far as it gives us a knowledge of the real - believe that Marxist science directly and naturally reflects the real, that it sufficed for Marx to see clearly, to read clearly - in short, to reflect in his abstract theory the essence of things given in things - without taking into account the enormous work of theoretical production necessary to arrive at knowledge; and we shall then be treating it in an empiricist fashion. In the two interpretations - dogmatic and empiricist - we will have a false idea of science, because we will consider the knowledge of reality to be the knowledge of a pure given, whereas knowledge is, on the contrary, a complex process of production of knowledges. The idea we have of science is decisive for Marxist science itself. If we have a dogmatic conception we will do nothing to develop it, we will indefinitely repeat its results, and not only will the science not progress, it will wither. If we have an empiricist conception we risk being equally incapable of making the science progress, since we will be blind to the nature of the real process of the production of knowledges, and will remain in the wake of facts and events - in the wake, that is to say, lagging behind. If, on the contrary, we have a correct idea of science, of its nature, of the conditions of the production of knowledges, then we can develop it, give it the life that is its right, and in the absence of which it would no longer be a science but a dead, fixed dogma.
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| There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of reaching its luminous summit.[8] |
This practice presupposes a whole series of specific theoretical conditions, into whose details it is not possible to enter here. The important point is that a science, far from reflecting the immediate givens of everyday experience and practice, is constituted only on the condition of calling them into question, and breaking with them, to the extent that its results, once achieved, appear indeed as the contrary of the obvious facts of practical everyday experience, rather than as their reflection. 'Scientific truth,' Marx writes, 'is always paradoxical, if judged by everyday experience, which captures only the delusive appearance of things.'[9]
Engels says the same thing when he declares that the laws of capitalist production
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| prevail although those involved do not become aware of them, so that they can be abstracted from everyday practice only by tedious theoretical analysis . . . [10] |
This theoretical work is not an abstraction in the sense of empiricist ideology. To know is not to extract from the impurities and diversity of the real the pure essence contained in the real, as gold is extracted from the dross of sand and dirt in which it is contained. To know is to produce the adequate concept of the object by putting to work means of theoretical production (theory and method), applied to a given raw material. This production of knowledge in a given science is a specific practice, which should be called theoretical practice - a specific practice, distinct, that is, from other existing practices (economic, political, ideological practices) and absolutely irreplaceable at its level and in its function. Of course this theoretical practice is organically related to the other practices; it is based on, and articulated with, them; but it is irreplaceable in its domain. This means that science develops by a specific practice - theoretical practice - which can on no account be replaced by other practices. This point is important, because it is an empiricist and idealist error to say that scientific knowledges are the product of 'social practice
in general', or of political and economic practice. To speak only of practice in general, to speak solely of economic and political practice, without speaking of theoretical practice as such, is to foster the idea that non-scientific practices - spontaneously, by themselves - produce the equivalent of scientific practice, and to neglect the irreplaceable character and function of scientific practice.
2. To know what a science is, is simultaneously to know that it can live only on condition that it develops. A science that repeats itself, without discovering anything new, is a dead science - no longer a science, but a fixed dogma. A science lives only in its development -
that is, from its discoveries. This point is likewise very significant because we may be tempted to believe that we possess completed sciences in historical and dialectical materialism as they are given to us today, and to be suspicious on principle of any new discovery. Naturally, the working-class movement has cause to be on guard against revisionisms that are always decked out in the robes of 'novelty' and 'renovation', but this necessary defence has nothing to do with suspicion of the discoveries of a living science. Were we to fall into this error, it would govern our attitude towards the sciences in question, and we would save ourselves the bother of what we nevertheless must do: devote all our efforts to developing these sciences, forcing them to produce new knowledges, new discoveries.
8. Letter to Maurice La Châtre, 18 March 1872, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters on ' Capital' , London 1983, p. 172 (translation modified). [Ed.]
9. Wages, Price and Profit, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, vol. 2, Moscow 1969, p. 54.
10. 'Supplement and Addendum to Volume 3 of Capital', in Karl Marx, Capital, volume 3, Harmondsworth 1981, p. 1037.
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Marx and Lenin put us on guard on this point, in showing us that the economic and political practice of the proletariat was, by itself, incapable of producing the science of society, and hence the science of the proletariat's own practice, but was capable only of producing utopian or reformist ideologies of society. Marxist-Leninist science, which serves the objective interests of the working class, could not be the spontaneous product of proletarian practice; it was produced by the theoretical practice of intellectuals possessing a very high degree of culture (Marx, Engels, Lenin) and 'introduced from without'[11] into proletarian practice, which it then modified and profoundly transformed. It is a leftist theoretical error to say that Marxism is a 'proletarian science', if by this one means that it was or is produced spontaneously by the proletariat. This error is possible only if one passes over in silence the existence and irreplaceable functions of scientific practice, as the practice productive of science. A fundamental condition of this scientific practice is that it works on the 'givens' of the experience of the economic and political practice of the proletariat and other classes. But this is only one of its conditions, for all scientific work consists precisely in producing, by starting from the experience and results of these concrete practices, knowledge of them, which is the result of another practice, an entire, specific theoretical labour. And we can get an idea of the immense importance and considerable difficulties of such work by reading Capital, knowing that Marx worked for thirty years to lay its foundations and develop its conceptual analyses.
It must be remembered, then, that no science is possible without the existence of a specific practice, distinct from other practices: scientific or theoretical practice. It must be remembered that this practice is irreplaceable, and that - like any practice - it possesses its own laws, and requires its own means and conditions of activity.
11. See Lenin, What is to be Done?, pp. 383-4. [Ed.]
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Marx, Engels and Lenin expressed themselves on this issue without any ambiguity. When, in a celebrated outburst, Marx said he was 'not a Marxist ',[12] he meant that he considered what he had done as simply the commencement of science, and not as a completed knowledge - because a completed knowledge is a non-sense that sooner or later leads to a non-science. Engels said the same when he wrote, for example, in 1877:
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With these discoveries [by Marx] socialism became a science. The next thing was to work out all its details.[13]
Political economy . . . as the science of the conditions and forms under which the various human societies have produced and exchanged and on this basis have distributed their products - political economy in this wider sense has still to be brought into being. Such economic science as we possess up to the present is limited almost exclusively to the genesis and development of the capitalist mode of production . . .'[14] |
Lenin states this even more forcefully, if possible, in 1899:
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| There can be no strong socialist party without a revolutionary theory which unites all socialists, from which they draw all their convictions, and which they apply in their methods of struggle and means of action. To defend such a theory, which to the best of your knowledge you consider to be true, against unfounded attacks and attempts to corrupt it is not to imply that you are an enemy of all criticism. We do not regard Marx's theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all |
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| directions if they wish to keep pace with life. We think that an independent elaboration of Marx's theory is especially essential for Russian socialists; for this theory provides only general guiding principles, which, in particular, are applied in England differently than in France, in France differently than in Germany, and in Germany differently than in Russia.[15] |
This text of Lenin's contains several major themes.
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1. |
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In the theoretical domain, Marx gave us the 'foundation stone' and 'guiding principles' - i.e. the basic theoretical principles of a theory - which absolutely must be developed. |
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This theoretical development is a duty of all socialists vis-à-vis their science, failing which they would be remiss in their obligation towards socialism itself. | |
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It is necessary to develop not only theory in general but also particular applications, according to the specific nature of each concrete case. | |
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4. | This defence and development of Marxist science presupposes both the greatest firmness against all who want to lead us back to a theoretical condition short of Marx's scientific principles, and a real freedom of criticism and scientific research for those who want to go beyond, exercised on the basis of the theoretical principles of Marx - an indispensable freedom for the life of Marxist science, as for any science. |
Our position must consist in drawing theoretical and practical conclusions from these principles. In particular, if both historical and dialectical materialism are scientific disciplines, we must of necessity develop them, make them produce new knowledges - expect from them, as from any living science, some discoveries. It is generally admitted that it must be thus for historical materialism, but it is not always clearly enough stated in the case of dialectical materialism, because we do not have a precise idea of the character of a scientific discipline, because we remain fixed on the (idealist) idea that philosophy is not really a discipline of a scientific character. In fact, we would be hard pressed to indicate the discoveries produced since Lenin in the domain of dialectical materialism, which has remained in practically the same state that Lenin brought it to in Materialism and Empirio-criticism. If this is so, it
is a state of affairs which must be examined very seriously, and then rectified. At the same time, if historical materialism has accrued the great theoretical discoveries of Lenin (the theory of imperialism, of the Communist Party, the beginning of a theory of the specific nature of the first phase of the forms of transition from the capitalist to the socialist mode of production), it has not subsequently been the site of important theoretical developments, which are, however, indispensable for solving the problems we face today - to name but one, the problem of the forms of transition between the complex modes of production combined in the so-called 'underdeveloped' countries and the socialist mode of production. In the same way, the difficulty of accounting theoretically for a historical fact as significant as the 'cult of personality' makes the insufficient development of the theory of the specific forms of transition between the capitalist and socialist modes of production, perfectly apparent.
3. If to develop Marxist science (in its two domains) is a duty for Communists, this duty must be considered in its concrete conditions. For a science to be able to develop, it is first of all necessary to have a correct idea of the nature of science and, in particular, of the means by which it develops, and therefore of all the real conditions of its development. It is necessary to assure these conditions and, in particular, to recognize - theoretically and practically - the irreplaceable role of scientific practice in the development of science. It is necessary, then, clearly to define our theory of science, to reject all dogmatic and empiricist interpretations, and to make a precise conception of science prevail intellectually and practically. It is also necessary practically to assure the conditions of scientific freedom required by theoretical research, to provide the material means of this freedom (organizations, theoretical reviews, etc.). Finally, the real conditions of scientific or theoretical research in the domain of Marxism itself must be created. It is to this concern that the creation of the Centre d'Études et de Recherches Marxistes and the Institut Maurice Thorez must respond in France. But it is also necessary for these different measures to be co-ordinated, considered as parts of a whole, and for a comprehensive politics - which can only be the act of the Party - to be conceived and applied in the matter of theory and theoretical research, in order to give historical and dialectical materialism the chance to develop, to live a real scientific life, and thereby to produce new knowledges. It must also be recognized that theoretical research cannot consist in simply repeating or commenting upon already acquired truths, and, a fortiori, that it has nothing to do with developing simple ideological themes or mere personal opinions. Theoretical research begins only in the zone that separates those know-
ledges already acquired and deeply assimilated from knowledges not yet acquired. To do scientific research this zone must have been reached and crossed. Accordingly, it is necessary to recognize that theoretical research demands a very strong theoretical formation simply to be possible, that it therefore supposes possession of a high degree not only of Marxist culture (which is absolutely indispensable) but also of scientific and philosophical culture in general. It is therefore necessary to encourage by all means this general education, at the same time as encouraging Marxist theoretical formation, the indispensable preliminary basis for all Marxist theoretical and scientific research.
4. We risk no error in proposing that the development of Marxist theory, in all its domains, is a primary, urgent necessity for our times, and an absolutely essential task for all Communists and for two different kinds of reason.
which complex economic, political and ideological relations exist as a function of the uneven development of the different countries. Finally, the theory to be developed concerns the current nature of imperialism, the transformations of the capitalist mode of production in the new conjuncture, the development of the productive forces, the new forms of economic concentration and government of the monopolies, and all the strategic and tactical problems of Communists in the current phase of the class struggle. All these problems open onto the future of socialism, and must be posed and resolved as a function of our definition of socialism and its appropriate structures. With all these problems, we are on the very terrain knowledge of which Lenin enjoined Communists to produce for each country, by developing Marxist theory on the basis of the knowledges already produced, as marked out by the 'foundation stone' of Marx's discoveries.
great deal of it - to form real theoreticians, and all the time lost in forming them costs in terms of a dearth of works, a delay, a stagnation, if not a regression, in the production of science, of knowledge. This is all the more true, since the positions that Marxists did not know how to occupy in the domain of knowledge have not remained vacant: they are occupied - especially in the domain of the 'human sciences' - by bourgeois 'scientists' or 'theoreticians', under the direct domination of bourgeois ideology, with all the practical, political, and theoretical consequences whose disastrous effects can be observed - or rather, whose disastrous effects are not always even suspected. Not only, then, do we have to make good our own delay, but we have to reoccupy on our own behalf the areas that fall to us by right (to the extent that they depend on historical materialism and dialectical materialism) and we have to reoccupy them in difficult conditions, involving a clear-minded struggle against the prestige of the results apparently achieved by their actual occupants.
5. Ideology
To be able, as rigorously as possible, to draw out the practical consequences of what has just been said about Marxist scientific theory, it is now necessary to situate and define an important new term: ideology.
of the working class - which was 'spontaneously' anarchist and utopian at the outset, and then became generally reformist - was gradually transformed by the influence and action of Marxist theory into a new ideology ; when we say that today the ideology of large sectors of the working class has become an ideology of a Marxist-Leninist character; when we say that we have to wage not only an economic struggle (through the unions) and a political struggle (through the Party) but an ideological struggle among the masses - when we say all this, it is clear that under the term ideology we are advancing a notion that involves social realities, which, while having something to do with a certain representation (and thus a certain 'knowledge') of the real, go far beyond the simple question of knowledge, to bring into play a properly social reality and function.
and effects are governed by the structure of class relations (the class struggle, law and the State). These same people participate in other activities - religious, moral, philosophical, etc. - either in an active manner, through conscious practice, or in a passive and mechanical manner, through reflexes, judgements, attitudes, etc. These last activities constitute ideological activity, they are sustained by voluntary or involuntary, conscious or unconscious, adherence to an ensemble of representations and beliefs - religious, moral, legal, political, aesthetic, philosophical, etc. - which constitute what is called the 'level' of ideology.
animals'. It is as if people, in order to exist as conscious, active social beings in the society that conditions all their existence, needed to possess a certain representation of their world, a representation which may remain largely unconscious or, on the contrary, be more or less conscious and thought out. Thus, ideology appears as a certain 'representation of the world ' which relates men and women to their conditions of existence, and to each other, in the division of their tasks and the equality or inequality of their lot. From primitive societies - where classes did not exist - onwards, the existence of this bond can be observed, and it is not by chance that the first form of this ideology, the reality of this bond, is to be found in religion ('bond' is one of the possible etymologies of the word religion ). In a class society, ideology serves not only to help people live their own conditions of existence, to perform their assigned tasks, but also to 'bear' their condition - either the poverty of the exploitation of which they are the victims, or the exorbitant privilege of the power and wealth of which they are the beneficiaries.
thinks he is dealing with pure, naked perception of reality itself, or a pure practice, the individual (and the empiricist philosopher) is, in truth, dealing with an impure perception and practice, marked by the invisible structures of ideology; since he does not perceive ideology, he takes his perception of things and of the world as the perception of 'things themselves', without realizing that this perception is given him only in the veil of unsuspected forms of ideology.
1. We notice, first of all, that the term ideology covers a reality which - while diffused throughout the body of society - is divisible into distinct areas, into specific regions, centred on several different themes. Thus, in our societies, the domain of ideology in general can be divided into relatively autonomous regions: religious ideology, moral ideology, juridical ideology, political ideology, aesthetic ideology, philosophical ideology. Historically, these regions have not always existed in these distinct forms; they only appeared gradually. It is to be expected that certain regions will disappear, or be combined with others, in the course of the development of socialism and Communism, and that those which remain will participate in the internal redivisions of the general domain of ideology. It is also important to remark that, depending upon the historical period (that is, the mode of production), and within identical modes of production, according to the different social formations in existence, and also, as we shall see, the different social classes, this or
that region of ideology dominates the others in the general domain of ideology. This explains, for example, the remarks of Marx and Engels on the dominant influence of religious ideology in all the movements of peasant revolt from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and even in certain early forms of the working-class movement; or, indeed, Marx's remark (which was not in jest) that the French have a head for politics, the English for economics, and the Germans for philosophy[17] - a significant remark for understanding certain problems specific to the working-class traditions in these different countries. The same kind of observations might be made regarding the importance of religion in certain liberation movements in former colonial countries, or in the resistance of Blacks to white racism in the United States. Knowledge of the different regions within ideology, knowledge of the dominant ideological region (whether religious, political, juridical, or moral), is of prime importance for the strategy and tactics of ideological struggle.
2. We note as well another essential characteristic of ideology. In each of these regions, ideology, which always has a determinate structure, can exist in more or less diffuse or unthought forms, or, contrariwise, in more or less conscious, reflected, and explicitly systematized forms - theoretical forms. We know that a religious ideology can exist with rules, rites, etc., but without a systematic theology; the advent of theology represents a degree of theoretical systematization of religious ideology. The same goes for moral, political, aesthetic ideology, etc.; they can exist in an untheorized, unsystematized form, as customs, trends, tastes, etc., or, on the contrary, in a systematized and reflected form: ideological moral theory, ideological political theory, etc. The highest form of the theorization of ideology is philosophy, which is very important, since it constitutes the laboratory of theoretical abstraction, born of ideology, but itself treated as theory. It is as a theoretical laboratory that philosophical ideology has played, and still plays, a very significant role in the birth of the sciences, and in their development. We have seen that Marx did not abolish philosophy; by a revolution in the domain of philosophy he transformed its nature, rid it of the ideological heritage hindering it and made of it a scientific discipline - thus giving it incomparable means with which to play its role as the theory of real scientific practice. At the same time, we must be aware that - with the
exception of philosophy in the strict sense - ideology, in each of its domains, is irreducible to its theoretical expression, which is generally accessible only to a small number of people; it exists in the masses in a theoretically unreflected form, which prevails over its theorized form.
3. Once we have situated ideology as a whole, once we have marked out its different regions, identified the region that dominates the others, and come to know the different forms (theorized and untheorized) in which it exists, a decisive step remains to be taken in order to understand the ultimate meaning of ideology: the meaning of its social function. This can be brought out only if we understand ideology, with Marx, as an element of the superstructure of society, and the essence of this element of the superstructure in its relation with the structure of the whole of society. Thus, it can be seen that the function of ideology in class societies is intelligible only on the basis of the existence of social classes. In a classless society, as in a class society, ideology has the function of assuring the bond among people in the totality of the forms of their existence, the relation of individuals to their tasks assigned by the social structure. In a class society, this function is dominated by the form taken by the division of labour in distributing people into antagonistic classes. It can then be seen that ideology is destined to assure the cohesion of the relations of men and women to each other, and of people to their tasks, in the general structure of class exploitation, which thus prevails over all other relations.
4. Here we touch on the decisive point which, in class societies, is at the origin of the falsity of ideological representation. In class societies, ideology is a representation of the real, but necessarily distorted,
because necessarily biased and tendentious - tendentious because its aim is not to provide men with objective knowledge of the social system in which they live but, on the contrary, to give them a mystified representation of this social system in order to keep them in their 'place' in the system of class exploitation. Of course, it would also be necessary to pose the problem of the function of ideology in a classless society - and it would be resolved by showing that the deformation of ideology is socially necessary as a function of the nature of the social whole itself, as a function (to be more precise) of its determination by its structure, which renders it - as a social whole - opaque to the individuals who occupy a place in society determined by this structure. The opacity of the social structure necessarily renders mythic that representation of the world which is indispensable for social cohesion. In class societies this first function of ideology remains, but is dominated by the new social function imposed by the existence of class division, which takes ideology far from the former function.
allusion to the real, without seeing in it the social function of the initially disconcerting - but essential - couple: illusion and allusion, recognition and misrecognition.
5. An important remark concerning class societies must be added. If in its totality ideology expresses a representation of the real destined to sanction a regime of class exploitation and domination, it can also give rise, in certain circumstances, to the expression of the protest of the exploited classes against their own exploitation. This is why we must now specify that ideology is not only divided into regions, but also divided into tendencies within its own social existence. Marx showed that 'the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class'.[18] This simple phrase puts us on the path to understanding that just as there are dominant and dominated classes in society, so too there are dominant and dominated ideologies. Within ideology in general, we thus observe the existence of different ideological tendencies that express the 'representations' of the different social classes. This is the sense in which we speak of bourgeois ideology, petty-bourgeois ideology, or proletarian ideology. But we should not lose sight of the fact that in the case of the capitalist mode of production these petty-bourgeois and proletarian ideologies remain subordinate ideologies, and that in them - even in the protests of the exploited - it is always the ideas of the dominant class (or bourgeois ideology) which get the upper hand. This scientific truth is of prime importance for understanding the history of the working-class movement and the practice of Communists. What do we mean when we say, with Marx, that bourgeois ideology dominates other ideologies, and in particular working-class ideology? We mean that working-class protest against exploitation expresses itself within the very structure of the dominant bourgeois ideology, within its system, and in large part with its representations and terms of reference. We mean, for example, that the ideology of working-class protest 'naturally' expresses itself in the form of bourgeois law and morality.
class ideology to transform itself to the point of freeing itself from bourgeois ideology it must receive, from without, the help of science ; it must transform itself under the influence of a new element, radically distinct from ideology: science. The fundamental Leninist thesis of the 'importation' of Marxist science into the working-class movement is thus not an arbitrary thesis or the description of an 'accident' of history; it is founded in necessity, in the nature of ideology itself, and in the absolute limits of the natural development of the 'spontaneous' ideology of the working class.
6. The Union of Marx's Scientific Theory and the
What has just been said regarding, on the one hand, the scientific theory of Marx and, on the other, the nature of ideology, allows us to understand in exactly what terms to pose the problem of the historical emergence, and the existence and action, of Marxist-Leninist organizations.
1. The first cardinal principle was formulated by Marx, Engels, Kautsky and Lenin: the principle of the importation into the existing working-class movement of a scientific doctrine produced outside the working class by Karl Marx, an intellectual of bourgeois origin who rallied to the cause of the proletariat. The working-class movement of 1840s Europe was then subject to either proletarian (anarchist) or more or less petty-bourgeois and utopian (Fourier, Owen, Proudhon) ideologies. By itself, the working class could not break out of the circle of an ideological representation of its goals and means of action; and we know that by virtue of the relay of moralizing, utopian, and thus reformist petty-bourgeois ideology, this ideological representation was, and remained, subjugated by the dominant ideology - that of the bourgeoisie. Even today, social-democratic working-class organizations have remained in this reformist ideological tradition. To conceive the scientific doctrine of socialism, the resources of scientific and philosophical culture, as well as exceptional intellectual capacities, were required. An extraordinary sense of the need to break with ideological forms, to escape their grip, and to discover the terrain of scientific knowledge was necessary. This discovery, this foundation of a new science and philosophy, was the work of Marx's genius, but it was also an unrelenting work, in which - in the most abject poverty - he used all his energies and sacrificed everything to his enterprise. Engels carried on
his work, and Lenin developed it anew. This, then, is the scientific doctrine which, in the course of a long and patient struggle, was imported from without into a working-class movement still given over to ideology, and transformed that movement's theoretical foundations.
2. The second cardinal principle concerns the nature of the historical union sealed between Marx's scientific theory and the working-class movement. This historical union, whose effects dominate all of contemporary history, was by no means an accident, even a happy one. The working-class movement existed before Marx conceived his doctrine; its existence did not, therefore, depend on Marx. The working-class movement is an objective reality, produced by the very necessity of the resistance, the revolt, the economic and political struggle of the working-class - itself produced as an exploited class by the capitalist mode of production. Now, we notice an incontestable historical fact, which has not only survived the worst ordeals (the crushing of the Commune, imperialist wars, suppression of working-class organizations in Italy, Germany and Spain, etc.) but been prodigiously reinforced over the course of time: the most important part - by far - of the working-class movement adopted Marx's scientific theory as its doctrine, and successfully applied this theory in its strategy and tactics as well as in its means and forms of organization and struggle. This adoption was not painless. It took dozens and dozens of years, experiences, trials and struggles for this adoption to be sealed. And even today the struggle continues: the struggle between so-called 'spontaneous' ideological conceptions of the working class - anarchistic, Blanquist, voluntarist, and other ideologies - and the scientific doctrine of Marx and Lenin.
experience, that this doctrine was true, that it imparted to its struggle an objective foundation and genuinely revolutionary objective means - it is for these reasons that the working-class movement adopted Marxist theory. It is because the working-class movement knew itself in Marxist theory that it recognized itself in it. It is the scientific truth of Marxist theory that has sealed its union with the working-class movement and made this union definitive. There is nothing fortuitous in this historical fact; everything here is a matter of necessity, and of its comprehension.
3. The third cardinal principle concerns the process by which this union was finally produced and by which it must unceasingly be maintained, reinforced, and extended. If the 'importation' of Marxist theory required a long haul and a great effort, this is precisely because it was effected through a protracted labour of education and formation in Marxist theory and, at the same time, a long ideological struggle. Marx and Engels had patiently to convince the best - the most dedicated and the most conscious - working-class militants to abandon existing ideological foundations and adopt the scientific foundations of socialism. This protracted work of education took many forms: direct political action by Marx and Engels, theoretical formation of militants in the course of the struggle itself (during the revolutionary period 1848-49), scientific publications, conferences, propaganda, etc.; and naturally, very quickly - once the conditions existed - organizational measures, on the national and then the international plane. In these terms, we can see the history of the First International as the history of the long struggle waged by Marx, Engels and their partisans to make the fundamental principles of Marxist theory prevail in the working-class movement. But at the same time as they were performing this work of education and formation in scientific theory, Marx, Engels and their partisans were constrained to wage a long, patient but harsh struggle against the ideologies that then dominated the working-class movement and its organizations, and against the religious, political and moral ideology of the bourgeoisie. Theoretical formation on the one hand, ideological struggle on the other - these are the two absolutely essential forms, two absolutely essential conditions, which governed the profound transformation of the spontaneous ideology of the working-class movement. These are two tasks which have never ceased, and will never cease, to impose themselves as vital tasks, indispensable to the existence and development of the revolutionary movement in the world - tasks which today condition the passage to socialism, the construction of socialism, and will later condition the transition to Communism.
7. Theoretical Formation and Ideological Struggle
The problem we now examine is distinct from the problem of the nature of Marxist science, distinct from the conditions of the exercise and development of its theoretical practice. We are now presupposing that Marxist science exists as a true living science, which continues to grow and to enrich itself with new discoveries, vis-à-vis the questions that the working-class movement and the development of the sciences pose to it. We are considering Marxist science as existing, as possessing at a given moment of its development a definite body of theoretical principles, analyses, scientific demonstrations, and conclusions - that is, knowledges. And we are asking ourselves the following question: by what means can and must one make this science pass into the working-class movement? By what means can this scientific doctrine be made to pass into the consciousness and the practice of working-class organizations?
struggle corresponds to the immediate practice of the workers, to the sufferings imposed on them as victims of economic exploitation, to their direct experience of this exploitation, and to their direct understanding - in this experience - of the economic fact of exploitation. In large-scale modern industry, wage workers, concentrated by the technical forms of production, directly perceive the class relation of economic exploitation, and they see in the capitalist boss the person who exploits them and benefits from their exploitation. Direct experience of wage labour and economic exploitation cannot furnish knowledge of the mechanisms of the economy of the capitalist mode of production, but is sufficient to make the workers aware of their exploitation and organize and engage in their economic struggle. This struggle is developed in trade unions, created by the workers themselves, without the intervention of Marxist science; these unions can survive and fight without recourse to Marxist science, and that is why trade-union action constitutes the chosen ground for economic reformism - a conception that anticipates the revolutionary transformation of society from economic struggle alone. It is this 'trade-unionist', apolitical-syndicalist conception that feeds the anarcho-syndicalist tradition, with its suspicion of politics, in the working-class movement. This is why Marx could say that trade unionism - that is, the organization of economic struggle on reformist premisses, and the reduction of the struggle of the working-class movement to economic struggle - constitutes the furthest extent, the limit-point of the evolution of the working-class movement 'left to its own devices'.
its juridical cover on the one hand, and economic exploitation on the other. For this, something more than intermittent, blind experience of certain effects of the existence of the class State is required: a knowledge of the mechanism of bourgeois society. In this domain, the 'spontaneous' conceptions of the proletariat, which govern their political actions, are significantly influenced by bourgeois conceptions, by the juridical, political and moral categories of the bourgeoisie. Whence the utopianism, anarchism and political reformism which can be observed not only at the outset of the political struggle of the working-class movement, but throughout its history. This anarchism and political reformism are incessantly perpetuated and renewed in the working class under the influence of the institutions and ideology of the bourgeoisie.
dominance of one region over others, of the different degrees (theorized, untheorized) of the existence of ideology; without knowledge of the class nature of ideology; without knowledge of the law of the domination of ideology by the ideology of the dominant class - without all this, ideological struggle is waged blindly. It can obtain some partial results, but never profound and definitive results. It is here that the limits of the natural, 'spontaneous' potential of the working-class movement are most strikingly revealed because, lacking scientific knowledge of the nature and social function of ideology, the 'spontaneous' ideological struggle of the working class is conducted on the basis of an ideology subjected to the insurmountable influence of the ideology of the bourgeois class. It is in the domain of ideological struggle that the necessity of an external intervention - that of science - is felt above all. This intervention is revealed to be even more important given that, as we have just seen, ideological struggle accompanies all other forms of struggle, and inasmuch as it is thus absolutely decisive for all forms of working-class struggle, since the inadequacy of the ideological conceptions of the working class left to itself produces anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist and reformist conceptions of its economic and political struggle.
submit it to a new influence - that of the Marxist science of society. It is precisely upon this point that the intervention of Marxist science in the working-class movement, and the union of Marxist science and the working-class movement, are founded and justified. And it is the very nature of ideology and its laws that determines the appropriate means to assure the transformation of the 'spontaneous' reformist ideology of the working-class movement into a new ideology, of a scientific and revolutionary character.
It is easy to understand how absolutely indispensable this theoretical formation was in the past in winning the working-class movement to the scientific theory of Marx. Its importance is perhaps less clear today, when Marxist theory directly inspires the most important working-class organizations and the entire life of socialist countries. Nevertheless, despite these spectacular historical results, our theoretical task is not finished, and never can be. When we say that the ideology of the working class has been transformed by Marxist theory, this cannot mean that the working class, which was otherwise 'spontaneously' reformist, has become definitively Marxist today. Only the vanguard of the working class, its most conscious part, possesses a Marxist ideology. The great mass of the working class is still in part subject to an ideology of a reformist character. And among the vanguard of the working class itself, which forms the Communist Party, there exists great unevenness in the degree of theoretical consciousness. Among the vanguard of the working class only the best militants have a genuine theoretical formation - in the area of historical materialism at least - and it is among them that theoreticians and researchers capable of advancing Marxist scientific theory can be recruited. This constant unevenness in the degree of theoretical consciousness underlies the demand for a continually renewed and updated effort of theoretical formation in today's Marxist organizations. This reality also dictates an exact conception of theoretical formation, defined as rigorously as possible.
would be unable to develop. Theoretical formation is thus something entirely different from simple economic, political or ideological formation. These must be preliminary stages of theoretical formation; they must be clarified by theoretical formation and founded upon it, but cannot be confused with it, because they are only partial stages of it. Practically speaking, there is no real theoretical formation without the study of Marxist science (theory of history, Marxist philosophy) in its purest existence - not only in the texts of Lenin, but also in the work on which all Lenin's texts were based, and to which they constantly refer: Capital. There is no real theoretical formation without an attentive, reflective and thorough study of the most important text of Marxist theory that we possess, a text which is far from having yielded to us all its riches.
The Party is not content to proclaim its loyalty to the principles of Marxist-Leninist science. What radically distinguishes the Party from other working-class organizations is not this simple proclamation; it is the concrete, practical application of Marxist scientific theory - in the Party's forms of organization, in its means of action, in its scientific analyses of concrete situations. Not content with proclaiming principles, but applying them in action - this is what distinguishes the Party from other workers' organizations. What finally distinguishes the Party is that - even while recognizing the specificity and necessity of theory, of theoretical practice and theoretical research, and the proper conditions of their existence and exercise - the Party refuses to reserve the knowledge of theory as a monopoly for some specialists, leaders and intellectuals, thereby relegating its practical application to other militants. On the contrary, consistent with Marxist theory itself, the Party wants to unite theory with its practical application as widely as possible, for the good of theory and practice alike.
in that of practice. We will fall into idealism pure and simple if theory is severed from practice, if theory is not given a practical existence - not only in its application, but also in the forms of organization and education that assure the passage of theory into practice and its realization in practice. We will fall into the same idealism if theory is not permitted, in its specific existence, to nourish itself from all the experiences, from all the results and real discoveries, of practice. But we will fall into another, equally grave form of idealism - pragmatism - if we do not recognize the irreplaceable specificity of theoretical practice, if we confuse theory with its application, if - not in words, but in deeds - we treat theory, theoretical research and theoretical formation as purely and simply auxiliary to practice, as 'servants of politics', if we construe theory as pure and simple commentary on immediate political practice. In these two forms of idealism, it can clearly be seen that disastrous practical consequences correspond to the errors of conception, consequences that can - as the history of the working-class movement has shown and still shows - gravely distort not only the working class's own practice, which may succumb to sectarianism or opportunism, but also theory itself, which may be doomed to the stagnation and regression of dogmatic or pragmatic idealism.
The correct distinction between theoretical formation and ideological struggle is thus essential in order to avoid falling into confusions which all ultimately come down to taking ideology for science, and thus reducing science to ideology.
Paris, 20 April 1965
15. 'Our Programme', Collected Works, vol. 4, pp. 211-12.
page 19
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The first kind of reason has to do with the very nature of the new tasks that 'life' - that is, history - imposes upon us. Since the 1917 Revolution and the era of Lenin, immense events have turned world history upside down. The growth of the Soviet Union, the victory against Nazism and Fascism, the great Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution and Cuba's passage into the socialist camp, the liberation of the former colonies, the revolt of the Third World against imperialism, have overturned the balance of forces in the world. But at the same time these events pose a considerable number of new, sometimes unprecedented problems, for whose solution the development of Marxist theory - and especially the Marxist theory of the forms of transition from one mode of production to another - is indispensable.
This theory not only concerns the economic problems of transition (forms of planning, the adaptation of the forms of planning to different specific stages of the transition, according to the particular condition of the countries considered); it also concerns the political problems (forms of the State, forms of the political organization of the revolutionary party, the forms and nature of the revolutionary party's intervention in the different domains of political, economic and ideological activity) and the ideological problems of transition (politics in the religious, moral, juridical, aesthetic and philosophical, etc., domains). The theory to be developed not only concerns the problems posed by so-called 'underdeveloped' countries in their transition to socialism, it also concerns the problems of countries already engaged in the socialist mode of production (the USSR) or close to it (China) - all the problems of planning, the definition of new legal and political forms in close correspondence with new relations of production (pre-socialist, socialist, Communist) and, of course, all the problems posed by the existence of a socialist camp in
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But it is not only the new face of history and its problems which obliges us resolutely to develop Marxist theory. We are confronted with a second kind of reason that has to do with the theoretical time lag that built up during the period of the 'cult of personality'. Lenin's slogan 'to develop theory in order to keep pace with life' is especially cogent here. If we would be hard pressed to cite any discoveries of great calibre in many areas of Marxist theory since Lenin, this is due in large part to the conditions in which the international working-class movement was enmeshed by the politics of the 'cult', by its countless victims in the ranks of very valuable militants, intellectuals and scientists, by the ravages inflicted by dogmatism on the intellect. If the politics of the 'cult' did not compromise the development of the material bases of socialism, it did, for many years, literally sacrifice and block all development of Marxist-Leninist theory; it effectively ignored all the indispensable conditions for theoretical reflection and research and, with the suspicion it cast on any theoretical novelty, dealt a very serious blow in practice to the freedom of scientific research and to all discovery.
The effects of dogmatic politics as far as theory is concerned can still be felt today, not only in the residues of dogmatism but also, paradoxically, in the often anarchic and confused forms assumed by the attempts of numerous Marxist intellectuals to regain possession of the freedom of reflection and research of which they were deprived for so long. Today this phenomenon is relatively widespread, not only in Marxist circles but in the Marxist parties themselves, and even in the socialist countries. What is most painful - and directly expressed in these generous, if often ideologically confused, essays - is how the period of the 'cult', far from contributing to their formation, on the contrary, prevented the theoretical formation of an entire generation of Marxist researchers, whose work we cruelly miss today. Time is required - a
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For these two kinds of reason - historical and theoretical - it is clear that the task of developing Marxist theory in all its domains is a political and theoretical task of the first order.
We have already seen that what distinguishes Marxist working-class organizations is the fact that they base their socialist objectives, their means of action and forms of organization, their revolutionary strategy and tactics, on the principles of a scientific theory - that of Marx - and not on this or that anarchist, utopian, reformist, or other ideological theory. Therewith, we have underscored a crucial distinction and opposition between science on the one hand, and ideology on the other.
But we have also foregrounded an actual reality, as real for the break that Marx had to effect with ideological theories of history in order to found his scientific discoveries as for the struggle waged by any science against the ideology that assaults it: not only does ideology precede every science, but ideology survives after the constitution of science, and despite its existence.
Furthermore, we have had to remark that ideology manifests its existence and its effects not only in the domain of its relations with science, but in an infinitely wider domain - that of society in its entirety. When we spoke of the 'ideology of the working class', to say that the ideology
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We are aware, then, in the practical use we make of this notion, that ideology implies a double relation: with knowledge on the one hand, and with society on the other. The nature of this double relation is not simple, and requires some effort to define. This effort of definition is indispensable if it is true, as we have seen, that it is of primary importance for Marxism to define itself unequivocally as a science - that is, as a reality distinct from ideology - and if it is true that the action of revolutionary organizations based upon the scientific theory of Marxism must develop in society, where at every moment and stage of their struggle, even in the consciousness of the working class, they confront the social existence of ideology.
In order to grasp this important but difficult problem, it is vital to step back a little and return to the principles of the Marxist theory of ideology, which form part of the Marxist theory of society.
Marx showed that every social formation constitutes an 'organic totality', comprised of three essential 'levels': the economy, politics, and ideology - or 'forms of social consciousness' .[16] The ideological 'level', then, represents an objective reality, indispensable to the existence of a social formation - an objective reality: that is, a reality independent of the subjectivity of the individuals who are subject to it, even whilst it concerns these individuals themselves; this is why Marx used the expression 'forms of social-consciousness'. How does the objective reality and social function of ideology present itself?
In a given society, people participate in economic production whose mechanisms and effects are determined by the structure of the relations of production ; people participate in political activity whose mechanisms
16. See the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Karl Marx, Early Writings, Harmondsworth 1975, pp. 425-6. [Ed.]
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Ideological representations concern nature and society, the very world in which men live; they concern the life of men, their relations to nature, to society, to the social order, to other men and to their own activities, including economic and political practice. Yet these representations are not true knowledges of the world they represent. They may contain some elements of knowledge, but they are always integrated into, and subject to, a total system of such representations, a system that is, in principle, orientated and distorted, a system dominated by a false conception of the world or of the domain of objects under consideration. In fact, in their real practice, be it economic or political, people are effectively determined by objective structures (relations of production, political class relations); their practice convinces them of the existence of this reality, makes them perceive certain objective effects of the action of these structures, but conceals the essence of these structures from them. They cannot, through their mere practice, attain true knowledge of these structures, of either the economic or political reality in whose mechanism they nevertheless play a definite role. This knowledge of the mechanism of economic and political structures can derive only from another practice, distinct from immediate economic or political practice, scientific practice - in the same way that knowledge of the laws of nature cannot be the product of simple technical practice and perception, which provide only empirical observations and technical formulae, but is, on the contrary, the product of specific practices - scientifc practices - distinct from immediate practices. None the less, men and women, who do not have knowledge of the political, economic and social realities in which they have to live, act and perform the tasks assigned them by the division of labour, cannot live without being guided by some representation of their world and their relations to this world.
In the first instance men and women find this representation ready-made at birth, existing in society itself, just as they find - pre-existing them - the relations of production and political relations in which they will have to live. Just as they are born 'economic animals' and 'political animals', it might be said that men and women are born 'ideological
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The representations of ideology thus consciously or unconsciously accompany all the acts of individuals, all their activity, and all their relations - like so many landmarks and reference points, laden with prohibitions, permissions, obligations, submissions and hopes. If one represents society according to Marx's classic metaphor - as an edifice, a building, where a juridico-political superstructure rests upon the infrastructure of economic foundations - ideology must be accorded a very particular place. In order to understand its kind of effectivity, it must be situated in the superstructure and assigned a relative autonomy vis-à-vis law and the State; but at the same time, to understand its most general form of presence, ideology must be thought of as sliding into all the parts of the edifice, and considered as a distinctive kind of cement that assures the adjustment and cohesion of men in their roles, their functions and their social relations.
In fact, ideology permeates all man's activities, including his economic and political practice; it is present in attitudes towards work, towards the agents of production, towards the constraints of production, in the idea that the worker has of the mechanism of production; it is present in political judgements and attitudes - cynicism, clear conscience, resignation or revolt, etc.; it governs the conduct of individuals in families and their behaviour towards others, their attitude towards nature, their judgement on the 'meaning of life' in general, their different cults (God, the prince, the State, etc.). Ideology is so much present in all the acts and deeds of individuals that it is indistinguishable from their 'lived experience', and every unmediated analysis of the 'lived' is profoundly marked by the themes of ideological obviousness. When he
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This is the first essential characteristic of ideology: like all social realities, it is intelligible only through its structure. Ideology comprises representations, images, signs, etc., but these elements considered in isolation from each other, do not compose ideology. It is their systematicity, their mode of arrangement and combination, that gives them their meaning; it is their structure that determines their meaning and function. The structure and mechanisms of ideology are no more immediately visible to the people subjected to them than the structure of the relations of production, and the mechanisms of economic life produced by it, are visible to the agents of production. They do not perceive the ideology of their representation of the world as ideology ; they do not know either its structure or its mechanisms. They practise their ideology (as one says a believer practises his religion), they do not know it. It is because it is determined by its structure that the reality of ideology exceeds all the forms in which it is subjectively lived by this or that individual; it is for this reason that it is irreducible to the individual forms in which it is lived; it is for this reason that it can be the object of an objective study. It is for this reason that we can speak of the nature and function of ideology, and study it.
Now a study of ideology reveals some remarkable characteristics.
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17. Althusser's gloss on Marx's discussion of the German status quo in 'A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Introduction', Early Writings, pp. 243-57. [Ed.]
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Ideology is thus destined, above all, an to assure the domination of one class over others, and the economic exploitation that maintains its pre-eminence, by making the exploited accept their condition as based on the will of God, 'nature', moral 'duty', etc. But ideology is not only a 'beautiful lie' invented by the exploiters to dupe the exploited and keep them marginalized; it also helps individuals of the dominant class to recognize themselves as dominant class subjects, to accept the domination they exercise over the exploited as 'willed by God', as fixed by 'nature', or as assigned by a moral 'duty'. Thus, it likewise serves them as a bond of social cohesion which helps them act as members of the same class, the class of exploiters. The 'beautiful lie' of ideology thus has a double usage: it works on the consciousness of the exploited to make them accept their condition as 'natural'; it also works on the consciousness of members of the dominant class to allow them to exercise their exploitation and domination as 'natural'.
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If we want to be exhaustive, if we want to take account of these two principles of necessary deformation, we must say that in a class society, ideology is necessarily deforming and mystifying, both because it is produced as deforming by the opacity of the determination of society by its structure and because it is produced as deforming by the existence of class division. It is necessary to come to this point to understand why ideology, as representation of the world and of society, is, by strict necessity, a deforming and mystifying representation of the reality in which men and women have to live, a representation destined to make men and women accept the place and role that the structure of this society imposes upon them, in their immediate consciousness and behaviour. We understand, by this, that ideological representation imparts a certain 'representation ' of reality, that it makes allusion to the real in a certain way, but that at the same time it bestows only an illusion on reality. We also understand that ideology gives men a certain 'knowledge' of their world, or rather allows them to 'recognize' themselves in their world, gives them a certain 'recognition'; but at the same time ideology only introduces them to its misrecognition. Allusion-illusion or recognition-misrecognition - such is ideology from the perspective of its relation to the real.
It will now be understood why every science, when it is born, has to break from the mystified-mystifying representation of ideology; and why ideology, in its allusive-illusory function, can survive science, since its object is not knowledge but a social and objective misrecognition of the real. It will also be understood that in its social function science cannot replace ideology, contrary to what the philosophes of the Enlightenment believed, seeing only illusion (or error) in ideology without seeing its
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The whole history of utopian socialism and trade-union reformism attests to this. The pressure of bourgeois ideology is such, and bourgeois ideology is so exclusively the provider of raw ideological material (frames of thought, systems of reference), that the working class cannot, by its own resources, radically liberate itself from bourgeois ideology ; at best, the working class can express its protest and its aspirations by using certain elements of bourgeois ideology, but it remains the prisoner of that ideology, held in its dominant structure. For 'spontaneous' working-
18. Manifesto of the Communist Party, in Karl Marx, The Revolutions of 1848, Harmondsworth 1973, p. 85. [Ed.]
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Very schematically summarized, these are the specific characteristics of ideology.
Working-class Movement
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If, then, the working-class movement adopted Marx's scientific doctrine against its incessantly resurgent 'spontaneous' ideological tendencies, and if the working-class movement made this adoption of its own accord, without compulsion, this is because a profound necessity presided over this adoption - over the union of the working-class movement and the scientific doctrine of Marx. This necessity resides in the fact that Marx produced objective knowledge of capitalist society, that he understood and demonstrated the necessity of class struggle, the necessity and the revolutionary role of the working-class movement, and thus provided the working-class movement with the knowledge of the objective laws of its existence, of its goals, and its action. It is because the working-class movement recognized in Marxist doctrine the objective theory of its existence and its action; it is because the working-class movement recognized in Marxist theory the theory that enabled it to understand the reality of the capitalist mode of production and its own struggles; it is because the working-class movement recognized, by
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Theoretical formation, ideological struggle - two notions which must now be examined in more detail.
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To answer this question it is necessary to step back again, this time to examine what the practice of the working-class movement in general consists of, independently of the scientific character of the principles brought to it by Marx.
As soon as the working-class movement gained a certain strength, and endowed itself with a minimum of organization, its practice was subject to objective laws, founded on the class relations of capitalist society as well as the total overall structure of society. The practice of the working-class movement, even in its utopian and reformist organizational forms, unfolds in three planes, corresponding to the three 'levels' constitutive of society: the economic, the political, and the ideological. Nor is this law specific to the working-class movement; it applies to any political movement, whatever its social nature and objectives. Of course, the class nature of different political movements or parties causes the forms of existence of this general law to vary considerably, but this law, with its variations, imposes itself on all political movements. The action of the working-class movement thus necessarily takes the form of a triple struggle: economic struggle, political struggle, ideological struggle.
We know that the economic struggle developed first, in sporadic fashion initially, then in more and more organized forms. In Capital, Marx shows us that the first phases of the proletariat's economic struggle unfolded around several themes, the most important of which were the struggles for the reduction of the working day, to defend and raise wages, etc. Other themes have intervened in the subsequent history of the working-class movement: the struggle for job security, for social benefits (social security), for paid holidays, etc. In all these cases, we are dealing with a struggle waged on the terrain of economic exploitation, and thus at the level of the relations of production themselves. This
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Whether it wants to or not, however, economic struggle always runs up against political realities that intervene directly and violently in the course of the economic struggle - if only in the form of the repression of protests, strikes and revolts during the workers' economic struggle by the forces of the bourgeois State and law: the police, the army, the courts, etc. From this experience, produced by the economic struggle itself, derives the necessity for a political struggle, distinct from the economic struggle. Here things become more complicated, for workers cannot have an experience of political reality comparable to their everyday experience of the reality of economic exploitation, because the forms of intervention of class political power are often - with the exception of intermittent displays of overt violence - concealed under cover of the 'law', and juridical, moral, or religious justifications of the existence of the State. This is why the political struggle of the working class is much more difficult to conceive and to organize than its economic struggle. To lead and organize this struggle on its real terrain, it is necessary to have recognized - at least partially - the nature and role of the State in the class struggle, the relation between political domination and
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In the early stages of its political struggle, and in the very limits of that struggle, the working-class movement thus confronts ideological realities, dominated by the ideology of the bourgeois class. This accounts for the third aspect of the struggle of the working-class movement: ideological struggle. In social conflicts the working-class movement, like all other political movements, experiences this fact: every struggle implies the intervention of people's 'consciousness'; every struggle involves a conflict between convictions, beliefs, and representations of the world. Economic struggle and political struggle also imply these ideological conflicts. Ideological struggle is not limited, then, to a particular domain. By means of the representation people have of their world, their place, their role, their condition and their future, ideological struggle embraces the totality of human activities, all the domains of their struggle. Ideological struggle is ubiquitous, because it is indissociable from the conception that people have of their condition in all the forms of their struggle; it is indissociable from the ideas in which people live their relation to society and to its conflicts. There can be no economic or political struggle unless people commit their ideas to it as well as their strength.
Nevertheless, ideological struggle can and must also be considered as a struggle in a specific domain: the domain of ideology, the domain of religious, moral, juridical, political, aesthetic and philosophical ideas. In this regard, ideological struggle is distinct from other forms of struggle: its object is the terrain of the objective reality of ideology, and its goal is, as far as possible, to free this domain from the domination of bourgeois ideology and transform it, in order to make it serve the interests of the working-class movement. Considered thus, ideological struggle is also a specific struggle which unfolds in the domain of ideology and must take account of the nature of this terrain, of the nature and laws of ideology. Without knowledge of the nature, laws and specific mechanisms of ideology; without knowledge of the distinctions within ideology, of the -
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We can sum up this analysis as follows. Independent of any influence by Marx's scientific theory, the very nature of the working-class movement commits it to a triple struggle: economic struggle, political struggle, ideological struggle. In the unity of these three distinct struggles, the general orientation of the struggle is fixed by the working class's representation of the nature of society and its evolution, the nature of the goals to be attained, and the means to be employed to wage the struggle successfully. The general orientation depends, then, on the ideology of the working-class movement. It is this ideology that directly governs the conception the working class has of its ideological struggle, and thus the manner in which it conducts the struggle to transform existing ideology; it is the ideology of the working class that directly governs its conception of its economic and political struggles, of their relations, and thus of the manner in which it conducts these struggles. At this level, everything depends on the content of the ideology of the working-class movement. Now, we know that this ideology remains a prisoner of the fundamental categories (religious, juridical, moral, political) of the dominant bourgeois class, even in the way the 'spontaneous' ideology of the working class expresses its opposition to the dominant bourgeois ideology.
Accordingly, everything depends on the transformation of the ideology of the working class, on the transformation which can extricate working-class ideology from the influence of bourgeois ideology and
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The necessity of this transformation of existing ideology, first of all in the working class itself, and then in the social strata that are its natural allies, allows us to comprehend the nature of the means of this transformation - ideological struggle and theoretical formation. These means constitute two decisive links in the union of Marxist theory and the working-class movement, and thus in the practice of the Marxist working-class movement.
Ideological struggle can be defined as struggle waged in the objective domain of ideology, against the domination of bourgeois ideology, for the transformation of existing ideology (the ideology of the working class, the ideology of the classes which may become its allies), in a way that serves the objective interests of the working-class movement in its struggle for revolution, and then in its struggle for the construction of socialism. Ideological struggle is a struggle in ideology; to be conducted on a correct theoretical basis, it presupposes knowledge of Marx's scientific theory as its absolute condition - it presupposes, then, theoretical formation. These two links - ideological struggle and theoretical formation - while both decisive, are thus not on the same plane; they imply a relation of domination and dependence. It is theoretical formation that governs ideological struggle, that is the theoretical and practical foundation of ideological struggle. In everyday practice, theoretical formation and ideological struggle constantly and necessarily intertwine. One may therefore be tempted to confuse them and misjudge their difference in principle, as well as their hierarchy. This is why it is necessary, from the theoretical perspective, to insist at once on the distinction in principle between theoretical formation and ideological struggle, and on the priority in principle of theoretical formation over ideological struggle.
It is through theoretical formation that Marx's scientific doctrine has been able to penetrate the working-class movement; it is by permanent theoretical education that it continues to penetrate, and to reinforce itself in, the working-class movement. Theoretical formation is an essential task of Communist organizations, a permanent task, which must be pursued without respite and must be incessantly updated, taking account of the development and enrichment of Marxist scientific theory.
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By theoretical formation, we understand the process of education, study and work by which a militant is put in possession - not only of the conclusions of the two sciences of Marxist theory (historical materialism and dialectical materialism), not only of their theoretical principles, not only of some detailed analyses and demonstrations - but of the totality of the theory, of all its content, all its analyses and demonstrations, all its principles and all its conclusions, in their indissoluble scientific bond. We literally understand, then, a thorough study and assimilation of all the scientific works of primary importance on which the knowledge of Marxist theory rests. We might use a striking formula of Spinoza's to represent this objective: Spinoza said that a science solely of conclusions is not a science, that a true science is a science of premisses (principles) and conclusions in the integral movement of the demonstration of their necessity. Far from being an initiation to simple conclusions, or to principles on the one hand and conclusions on the other, theoretical formation is the thorough assimilation of the demonstration of conclusions on the basis of principles, the assimilation of the profound life of science in its spirit, in its very methods; it is a formation that endows those who receive and acquire it with the very scientific spirit that constitutes science, without which science would not be born, and
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Doubtless, theoretical formation thus defined may be considered an ideal - not accessible to everyone, given the great theoretical difficulties of reading and studying Capital, the degree of intellectual formation of militants, and the limited time we have to dedicate ourselves to this work. We can, and absolutely must, concretely envisage the successive and progressive degrees of theoretical formation, and strike a balance between them, according to people and circumstances. But arranging and realizing this balance itself presupposes the effective recognition of theoretical formation, its nature and its necessity; it presupposes an absolutely clear knowledge of the ultimate objective of theoretical formation : to form militants capable of one day becoming men and women of science. To attain this goal one cannot aim too high, and by aiming well and truly it will be possible to define precisely the degrees and appropriate means of progression conducive to this objective.
Why attach such importance to theoretical formation? Because it represents the decisive intermediary link by which it is possible both to develop Marxist theory itself, and to develop the influence of Marxist theory on the entire practice of the Communist Party and thus on the profound transformation of the ideology of the working class. It is this double reason that justifies the exceptional importance which Communist Parties have attributed in their past history, and must attribute in their present and future history, to theoretical formation. It is, in fact, by means of well-conceived theoretical formation that Communist militants - whatever their social origin - can become intellectuals in the strong sense of the term - that is, men and women of science, capable one day of advancing Marxist theoretical research. It is also the precise knowledge of Marxist science which theoretical formation represents that makes it possible to define and implement, on the basis of Marxist-Leninist science, the Party's economic and political activity and its ideological struggle (its objectives and its means).
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That is why it must want to extend the broadest possible theoretical formation to the greatest possible number of militants; it must want to educate them constantly in theory, to make them militants in the full sense of the term - capable of analysing and understanding the situation in which they have to act, and thus of helping the Party to define its politics; and also capable, in their own practice, of making new observations and new experiences that will serve as already elaborated raw material on which other, more theoretically formed militants and the best Marxist theoreticians and researchers will work. To say that the entire orientation, and all the principles of action, of the Party rest on Marxist-Leninist theory; to say that practical experience of the political action of the masses and of the Party is indispensable to the development of theory - this is to affirm a fundamental truth which makes sense only if it takes a concrete form, if a real and fruitful bond is created in both directions - through necessary organizational measures - between theory and its development on the one hand, and the economic, political and ideological practice of the Party on the other. Creation of this bond is the Party's task. And the first, absolutely decisive, link of this bond is constituted by the most thorough theoretical formation of the greatest possible number of militants.
In all these matters, it is as imperative to conceive the overall unity of the organic process that relates scientific theory and revolutionary practice in both directions as it is to conceive the specific distinction of the different moments, and the articulation of this unity. Such a double conception is indispensable, as we have just seen, for positive reasons that are at once theoretical and practical. It is equally imperative to be on guard against negative confusions both in the domain of theory and
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At the end of our analysis, then, we rejoin the cardinal principle with which we began: the distinction between science and ideology. Without this distinction it is impossible to understand the specificity of Marxism as a science, the nature of the union of Marxism and the working-class movement, and all the theoretical and practical consequences that flow therefrom.
It would be as well to remember that this analysis cannot pretend to be exhaustive; that it had to proceed by simplification and schematization; that it leaves a number of important problems unresolved. We hope that it may nevertheless furnish a correct idea of the decisive importance of the distinction between science and ideology, and of the light that this distinction sheds on a whole series of theoretical and practical problems which working-class and popular Marxist organizations have to confront and resolve in their struggle for the revolution, and for the transition to socialism.
*Sur le travail théorique. Difficultés et ressources,
La Pensée 132, April 1967.
Translated by James H. Kavanagh
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I would like to expound, in some rapid pages, some of the difficulties encountered by any work of theoretical exposition of Marxist principles, before proceeding to an inventory of the resources - some well known, others sometimes misunderstood - at our disposal.
1. Difficulties
Whatever the simplicity of its language and the clarity of its exposition, any Marxist theoretical treatise presents some specific and inevitable difficulties: inevitable because they pertain to the specific nature of theory or, more precisely, theoretical discourse.
A. Difficulty of the Terminology of Theoretical Discourse
Marxism is at once a science (historical materialism) and a philosophy (dialectical materialism). Scientific discourse and philosophical discourse have their own requirements: they use the words of everyday language, or composite expressions constructed with the words of everyday language, but these words always function otherwise than they do in everyday language. In theoretical language, words and expressions function as theoretical concepts. To be precise, this implies that the meaning of words in such a language is not fixed by their ordinary usage but by the relations between theoretical concepts within a conceptual system. It is these relations that assign to words, designating concepts, their theoretical meaning. The peculiar difficulty of theoretical terminology pertains, then, to the fact that its conceptual meaning must always be discerned behind the usual meaning of the word, and is always different from the latter. Now this difficulty is concealed for the unaware reader when the theoretical term purely and simply reproduces an ordinary term. For example, everyone thinks they immediately know what Marx means when he uses so ordinary a word as 'labour'. Yet it requires a great effort to discern, behind the common (ideological) obviousness of this word, the Marxist concept of labour - or better still, to see that the word 'labour' can designate several distinct concepts - the concepts of the labour process, labour power, concrete labour, abstract labour, etc.
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When it is clear - that is, when it is firmly fixed and well marked off - a theoretical terminology assumes the precise function of preventing confusion between the normal meaning of w