IS THERE A FUTURE FOR MARXISM?

IS THERE A FUTURE FOR MARXISM?

By the same author ALTHUSSER'S MARXISM SOUTHERN AFRICA AFTER SOWETO (with john Rogers) MARXISM AND PHILOSOPHY THE REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS OF KARL MARX

IS THERE A FUTURE FOR MARXISM? Alex Callinicos M MACMILLAN PRESS LONOON

A. T. Callinicos 1982 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First edition 1982 Reprinted 1983 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-28479-7 ISBN 978-1-349-16677-0 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-16677-0

Contents Preface and Acknowledgements vn Definitions Introduction 1 1 The 'Crisis of Marxism' 5 2 In the Beginning Was the Word 25 3 Althusser and the Return to Marx 53 4 Desire and Power 81 5 Difference and Contradiction 112 6 Relations of Production 142 7 For and Against Epistemology 168 8 Classical Marxism and Contemporary Capitalism 196 Notes and References 226 Name Index 252 Subject Index 258 1x v

Preface and Acknowledgements Without the help of a number of people this book would not have appeared. I would like to thank the following especially: Tony Cliff, Tony Dodd, Duncan Hallas, Chris Harman, Alan Montefiore, Mike Rosen, Joanna Seddon, Colin Sparks. David Edgar first stirred me from my dogmatic slumber and made me realise that there was a case to answer. I am also grateful to the Master and Fellows of StPeter's College, Oxford, and to John Winckler and Anne-Lucie Norton at Macmillan's. The usual disclaimer that no one but myself is responsible for the outcome is more than usually appropriate in this case. I am painfully aware of the provisional and sketchy nature of the arguments in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. However, I offer this book in the hope that it may make some contribution to clarifying the issues raised by current debate on marxist theory. Vll

Definitions The following terms have much currency in contemporary marxist writing. Since I have found it necessary to use them, and since they have a technical meaning, these definitions may be helpful. Mode of production designates more than simply the economy. It is best understood as a set of relations of production, the forces of production corresponding to them, and the social relations which can be deduced from these relations. So the concept of the capitalist mode of production includes not simply all the economic determinations elaborated by Marx in Capital; it also includes, at the minimum, some basic definition of the capitalist state. Social formation is, by contrast, a more concrete concept. No mode of production in the pure form ever exists. What does exist are definite social formations in which different relations of production co-exist with, however, one set of relations prevailing over the others. Thus Marx in Capital analyses the (economic level of the) capitalist mode of production, Lenin in The Development of Capitalism in Russia (some aspects of) the Russian social formation. Nicos Poulantzas, populariser of this jargon, writes that 'social formations are not... the concretisation and spatialisation of modes of production existing already in a state of abstract purity, but rather the particular form in which modes of production exist or are reproduced'. 1 Discourse is a generic term for both the activities of speaking and writing and their result, bodies of utterances and inscriptions. IX