Reading Althusser Through Mao

Reading Althusser through Mao [email protected] / March 22, 2015 By DOUG ENAA GREENE To my friend and comrade, Julia, who is not only the smartest anarchist I know, but who also made me take Althusser seriously. In his 1973 Essays in Self-Criticism, French Communist philosopher Louis Althusser penned the following words: If we look back over our whole history of the last forty years or more, it seems to me that, in reckoning up the account (which is not an easy thing to do), the only historically existing (left) ‘critique’ of the fundamentals of the ‘Stalinian deviation’ to be found – and which, moreover, is contemporary with this very deviation, and thus for the most part precedes the Twentieth Congress – is a concrete critique, one which exists in the facts, in the struggle, in the line, in the practices, their principles and their forms, of the Chinese Revolution.1 What Althusser says here is something that is all too often dismissed by both his admirers and detractors, that the Chinese Revolution – especially the Cultural Revolution – provided a living and breathing “correction” and “overcoming” of the limitations of inherited Soviet-style Marxism (including that practiced by the French Communist Party). Even to many of Althusser’s admirers, his “flirtation” with Maoism is often seen as something bizarre. In fact, Maoism is widely viewed by large segments of the Western left as just a variant of “Stalinism” which makes it fundamentally flawed for revolutionary practice. And the supposed “Stalinism” of Maoism therefore provides one of the fundamental flaws of Althusser’s theoretical effort to reconstitute Marxist Theory. However, the premise defended here is that Althusser was correct that Maoism represented a revitalization of the Marxist revolutionary project that he fruitfully utilized to develop his own ideas. The limit of Althusser’s project was not his engagement with Maoism, but that he wasn’t to able see that commitment all the way through and remained bound within the confines of the (non-revolutionary) French Communist Party. The Chinese Revolution and Maoism2 The distinctive theory and practice of Mao developed following the bloody suppression of the Revolution in the urban centers in 1927. Following this defeat, Mao Zedong and the surviving Communist cadre retreated into the countryside where revolutionary warfare among the peasantry was organized. Mao, breaking with previous communist orthodoxy on how a revolution was to be in China, and by 1934 achieving independent leadership from Comintern, developed a new political and military approach for the Chinese Revolution. For the next two decades, Mao’s army was able to go from being a ragtag force of poor and hunted outlaws to leading a mass movement of tens of millions that led the world’s second great socialist revolution to power in 1949. Following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China,

Mao and the Chinese Communist leadership initially followed the example of the Soviet Union in building socialism. However, Mao became increasingly uneasy at the bureaucratic, conservative and authoritarian tendencies in the Communist Party, divorce between the party and the masses and the growth of inequality in China which he feared could lead to a restoration of capitalism. The Chinese road to communism found itself at odds with that of the Soviet Union, leading to a split in the early 1960s. In 1966, the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, initiated by Mao and his supporters saw millions of workers, students and peasants rise up against “capitalist roaders” within the CCP. So what were some of Mao’s key theoretical innovations to a revitalization of Marxism and communism in contrast to Soviet dogmatism that Althusser would later draw on? We shall touch on three here: dialectics, investigation and its relation to political practice, criticism of Stalin/USSR, continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Following this, we will then look at how Althusser developed these ideas in his own efforts to renew Marxism.

Mao leading the Chinese Revolution

a. On Practice and On Contradiction Mao’s major contributions to Marxist theory can be found in his two philosophical works written in the mid-1930s, On Practice and On Contradiction. In the former, Mao is concerned with how do we apply Marxism to achieve knowledge? Mao states that in order to change the world, we need to understand the world through the knowledge of a thing by being in contact with it. For example: If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. But one cannot have direct experience of everything; as a matter of fact, most of our knowledge comes from indirect experience, for example, all knowledge from past times and foreign lands.3 So what are the levels of knowledge that Mao identifies? The first level of knowledge is phenomenal. At a phenomenal level of practice, you see the separate aspects and existential relations of things. For example, say you go to a factory and see the people who work there. All

you see at this level is merely the external relations of things. This is just a perceptual stage of cognition where you gain knowledge through sense perceptions and impressions. At best the knowledge gained here gives you a rough sketch of a phenomenon. From the first level, there is the second level of knowledge. Mao identifies this level as that of rational knowledge. This is where you go deeper, past the external to the internal. You use the perceptual knowledge gained from the first level to arrive at a comprehension of the internal relations of things. Once you see how things operate, you can understand their laws of motion and how one thing relates to another. Through understanding the internal relations of something (the position of classes and their struggle, the development of the economy and ideology, etc.), you see things in their totality (or the whole picture). For instance, a Marxist doesn’t just look at the surface relations of capitalism (exchange in the market place), but the internal relations (i.e. class struggle, the labor process and the development of capital, etc.). During this whole process, it is important to remember that a Marxist is looking at things from the standpoint of the working class and seeking to change the world. For Mao, rational knowledge is dependent on perceptual knowledge. Rational knowledge allows one to deepen knowledge and investigate. Yet Mao says that the movement of knowledge doesn’t end at the second level. It isn’t enough to investigate something, but to use that theory to guide action. But Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide action. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance. Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice. The active function of knowledge manifests itself not only in the active leap from perceptual to rational knowledge, but–and this is more important–it must manifest itself in the leap from rational knowledge to revolutionary practice.4 Mao says that if a correct theory isn’t tied to practice, then it is lifeless. It isn’t enough to just debate the laws of capital, but you need to overturn them. Theory needs to be placed in the service of changing the world in the midst of the class struggle. There are questions that should be asked about applying a theory to practice. Does a theory achieve its objectives? (i.e. is a strike at a particular factory the appropriate course? The only way to know is to test the theory) If the theory works, then certain ideas, plans and programs that correspond to that theory should be applied. (i.e. the methods used to win a strike could be applied elsewhere) Yet this doesn’t mean that the methods used to win a particular strike can be applied everywhere and at all times. According to Mao, knowledge gained from theory can seldom be realized without alteration. Perhaps at a follow up strike, the union leadership is hostile and other forces would have to be used. Or the factory owners are using thugs to impose order and the workers may have to take offensive action. This change in applying theory results because our knowledge is limited. A

theory may not correspond with reality (in part or wholly). If a theory doesn’t correspond to reality, then it is incorrect. In that case, there would need to be more investigation and testing (through the methodological levels Mao outlines above). This would mean more experimentation and testing before results can be achieved. In other words, achieving knowledge is not something achieved once and for all, but is a continuous process. Central to Mao’s thinking is that Marxists need to be involved in the process of revolution in order to change the world. He attacks those so-called revolutionaries who issue orders from the sidelines without considering circumstances, the totality of a situation, or the contradictions. Those who do so are using one-sided and subjective methods and are bound to fail in changing the world. Mao sums up his method as follows: Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.5 As we can see, applying Mao’s dialectical method is not something that can be done statically. In On Contradiction, Mao says that we need to recognize that “The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics.”6 Some of the areas that Mao deals with in regards to contradiction are the following which would find their way into Althusser’s work: that in particular social situations, there is a principal and a non-principal contradiction and the interaction of the base and the superstructure. For in applying Marxist theory to our investigation, we need to recognize that Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new.7 This is in line with basic Marxist theory, however Mao goes on and states that while contradiction is universal in society and nature (without it nothing can exist), each “form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction.”8 And this means in the concrete, we have to identify a particular contradiction. And in each situation, Mao says there “are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.”9 For instance, the principal contradiction in capitalism is that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Yet in even in this situation, there is also nonprincipal contradictions such as between the feudal class versus the bourgeoisie along with many others. Depending on the circumstances though, a different particular contradiction can be the

principal one to tackle. And this means that the other contradictions Mao says presents a very complicated picture of reality. Yet Mao emphasized that “at every stage in the development of a process, there is only one principal contradiction which plays the leading role… Therefore, in studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must devote every effort to funding its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved.”10 And of course, solving the principal contradiction is done through social practice. Yet this is not all according to Mao, for in every situation while we need to focus on the principal contradiction, the development of contradictions is uneven and always in motion. And as Marxists, Mao says we must always be conscious of this because the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the nonprincipal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed–a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.11 For example, in the case of China in the 1930s was semi-feudal and capitalist with society dominated by comprador capitalists of Kuomintang, along with landlords throughout the countryside. This represented a double burden of oppression on the workers and peasants of China. However, the whole of China was also threatened by invasion and conquest from Imperial Japan. In analyzing this situation, Mao and the CCP believed that the principle contradiction facing China was the struggle for national liberation from Japan, the other contradictions being secondary. As we have said, one must not treat all the contradictions in a process as being equal but must distinguish between the principal and the secondary contradictions, and pay special attention to grasping the principal one. But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position. Thus depending on the circumstances, a different particular contradiction can be the principal one to tackle. This allows Mao to break with dogmatic forms of Marxist thinking that state the principal contradiction In society is always that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and that the base always determines the superstructure “for instance, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the productive forces are the principal aspect; in the contradiction between theory and practice, practice is the principal aspect; in the contradiction between the economic base and the superstructure, the economic base is the principal aspect; and there

is no change in their respective positions. This is the mechanical materialist conception, not the dialectical materialist conception. True, the productive forces, practice and the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role; whoever denies this is not a materialist. But it must also be admitted that in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role.”12 Mao asserts that sometimes politics needs to placed in command with correct ideas, there is a place for the subjective factor. And he insists that “Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world. In their social practice, men engage in various kinds of struggle and gain rich experience, both from their successes and from their failures.”13 Mao believes that if one is to avoid mechanical materialism, which looks at just how the base interacts with the superstructure, then “we also–and indeed must–recognize the reaction of mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure on the economic base.”14

Mao addressing soldiers of the People’s liberation Army.

B. Mass Line Having looked at Mao’s philosophical ideas, how do they translate into political practice for the Communist Party? It is here that he develops one of the distinctive practices for revolutionary organization – the mass line. The mass line was the method of practice that communists implemented to involve the people in politics. According to Mao, “There are two methods

which we Communists must employ in whatever work we do. One is to combine the general with the particular; the other is to combine the leadership with the masses.”15 So what does this mean? For Mao, this means that communists need to study thoroughly and gain experience in the process (while doing organizing, you might want to keep abreast of political economy). Revolutionaries should be learning theory and history of a general situation, while learning the strong and weak points of a particular situation (what does the labor struggle of a whole country mean at a single factory?). All of this study, which is in fact the general way communists gain knowledge, is done with a view to changing a particular situation. In regards to combining leadership with the masses, Mao discusses the methodology as follows: “In all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily “from the masses, to the masses”. This means: take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses and once again go to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge.”16 Activists go among the people, they investigate the conditions which they find there (what are working conditions in the urban ghettos? How is the state acting?). They take the scattered and often unsystematic ideas of the masses (someone speaks of police brutality, another of unsafe working conditions, racist discrimination). Remember, these ideas are may not be all that coherent (some people in the ghetto may protest their conditions, either individually or collectively, yet accept the basic framework of the system). Revolutionaries need to take these ideas and via study, turn them into concentrated and systemic ideas (relating a particular condition to large historical forces). From this, revolutionaries then go back to the masses and propagate these ideas until the masses accept them as their own, thus translating theory into action. This is not a one time deal, but the process of “from the masses to the masses” is done again and again (this process is similar to the theory of knowledge found in On Practice). All the while, the revolutionaries link the particular struggle to raising consciousness and fighting for communism. Mao saw the mass line as not only the core of communist work, but a way to unite the advanced, win over the intermediate and isolate the backward. The advanced are those who are struggling and active in a particular situation. They are also open to communist ideas (if they haven’t accepted them already). The intermediate are those who are wavering to the struggle, but can be won over. The backward are those who are either hostile or indifferent to the struggle. What revolutionaries need to do is to link up with the advanced detachments of the masses. This is a key point that Mao stressed. If revolutionaries want to be effective, they have to be active with the masses, not standing on the sidelines. At the same time, revolutionaries need to raise the

consciousness of the intermediate while seeking to win over or isolate the backward. Through this process, a revolutionary group is formed in the process of mass struggle. The philosophical method of Mao: looking at the development of contradictions in the development of complex social structures, the dynamic interaction of base and superstructure, the role of practice and investigation by communists, and the mass line were all a sharp break with prevailing forms of Soviet philosophical and political orthodoxy. And as we shall see later on, they greatly influenced the political ideas of Louis Althusser.

Soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army.

c. People’s War All this being said, how did Mao apply his ideas to a study of the particular contradictions of the Chinese social formation? Mao did this by developing the theory of the New Democratic Revolution. The New Democratic Revolution sought to accomplish the basic tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution (land reform, independence, nationalization, economic development). In orthodox Marxist theory, promoted by the Comintern, this task was supposed to fall to the national bourgeois. Yet as Mao constantly emphasized, this was a class which was wrought with contradiction. On the one hand it was was oppressed by foreign capital like the rest of the nation. The national bourgeois was tied to landlords and rural property relations (which were often of a feudal nature). In order for a democratic revolution to succeed, those property relations would have to be challenged. Furthermore the national bourgeois was also an adversary of the proletariat. If the proletariat was playing an active role in the revolution, would the national bourgeois not turn its face toward the counterrevolution? Certainly that was a possibility in the eyes of Mao, the national bourgeois was a vacillating class. It only had the potential depending on concrete circumstances to act in a revolutionary way. Mao believed that the national bourgeois could still be a potential ally of the proletariat (which was interested in overthrowing foreign capital) and the peasantry (who desired land reform) and the petty-bourgeois. Mao argued for an alliance with those forces that had an interest in the democratic revolution. Yet in this alliance, the proletariat party was to have leadership and independence. Considering that when the Chinese Communists were in alliance with the

Nationalist Party in 20s, they had surrendered both leadership and independence, being slaughtered in the process, Mao’s ideas make sense. Mao believed that this four class alliance would establish a common (or people’s) dictatorship upon liberation. Mao believed, that at the heart of the New Democratic Revolution was the transformation of a semi-colonial and feudal society not under the leadership of the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat. And even though Mao recognized that the New Democratic Revolution suppressed the comprador bourgeoisie (tied with imperialism), and even though the NDR retained private capitalist enterprise, this was to create the prerequisites for socialism (indeed the NDR was largely completed in China by 1956 when many capitalists were simply bought out). And unlike many in the Communist Party who saw the NDR as a protracted phase, Mao looked at overcoming. And if the New Democratic Revolution in China was supposed to be accomplished under the leadership of the proletariat, how did that manifest itself in practice? This was done through the development of base areas in China which were an alternative form of popular power, the development of a broad hegemonic alliance of oppressed classes, and a different mode of warfare from the enemy. While Mao believed that the development of base areas and a Red army was specific to China and tied to the weakness of the state apparatus, splits in the ruling class, prolonged wars, the development of a national and democratic revolutionary movement, and a revolutionary crisis along with a strong Red Army and Communist Party organization.17 While Red Political Power was able to exist in these conditions in China, the ruling class and its state still possessed formidable power and an army of considerable power. The Red Army by contrast during this period was quite small and could not directly challenge the armies of the Chinese state in a frontal war of movement (nor would they do so until the final phase of the revolutionary war during the late 1940s). While Mao never disavowed the final goal of the revolutionary offensive, he understood that the nature of the war (against both Chiang Kai-Shek and later the Japanese) the Communists faced was protracted and that they needed to plan for the long haul. As Mao argued, the first phase of the war was that of the strategic defensive, when “our strategic situation and policy when the enemy is on the offensive and we are on the defensive; by strategic offensive we mean our strategic situation and policy when the enemy is on the defensive and we are on the offensive.”18 This meant recognizing the numerical and military superiority of the enemy and fighting accordingly. Part of the way, Mao envisioned fighting the enemy was by adopting a strategy of ““pit one against ten” and our tactics are “pit ten against one” — this is one of our fundamental principles for gaining mastery over the enemy.”19 This meant fighting with small-scale guerrilla attacks, surprising the enemy, luring them to unfavorable ground and ambushing them, assaulting their rear, and the guerrillas needed to strike the enemy with overwhelming numbers. The strategy here is to force the enemy to spread themselves out, harassing him all along the line, where he is weakest and then to annihilate him one by one. 20

While Mao took his adversaries seriously in a tactical sense, he despised them all strategically. As Mao explained We have developed a concept over a long period for the struggle against the enemy, namely, strategically we should despise all our enemies, but tactically we should take them all seriously. In other words, with regard to the whole we must despise the enemy, but with regard to each specific problem we must take him seriously.21 For Mao recognized that whether his enemy was Chiang Kai-Shek, the Japanese Empire, or US Imperialism these forces possessed no popular support, its policies were opposed by the people and they all oppressed and exploited the masses and the way they waged warfare reflected that. Mao and the Communists by contrast fought differently. Although Mao never neglected military matters in terms of war, he believed that the political came first. And the first priority of the Red Army was not to defend territory (he was quite willing to retreat if needed) or stage an offensive, but political mobilization – raising the consciousness of the people and involving them directly in the war. This was reflected in the class character of Mao’s people’s army which was not a traditional army, but a people’s army that is disciplined, politically conscious, and serves the people. A people’s army links the military struggle against the enemy to the process of carrying out revolution and land reform, establishing new forms of popular power, struggling against oppression, applying the mass line, and building a new culture in base areas. The base areas would serve as a pole of attraction for support among the people while undermining the old regime. As Mao said of the Long March, it “is the first of its kind in the annals of history, that it is a manifesto, a propaganda force, a seeding-machine.”22 The victory was to be primarily political, creating a pole of attraction for the masses. Indeed, the experience of the base area of Yenan was just this type of pole of attraction where the Maoist forces were away from the state and army, able to establish their own liberated zone, build up their forces, link up with the people and prepare themselves to rule.23

Stalin and Mao.

d. Mao on Stalin Following the triumph of the Chinese Revolution, as we have discussed, Mao grew increasingly concerned at the road other members of the CCP were following. The slavish adoption of Soviet methods in building socialism in China. He saw commandism, bureaucracy, and a reliance on technology as opposed to the masses. We will shortly look at how Mao’s criticism Soviet-style socialism developed as a left-wing alternative to “Stalinism” in both theory and practice to reinvigorate socialism and revolution. Mao’s “left-wing” critique was at odds with Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech of 1956 denouncing Stalin, that he believed was a right-wing cover for downplaying class struggle and revolution in order to accommodate western imperialism and leading to the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. Mao’s major criticisms of Stalin can be found most prominently in two major works, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People and Critique of Soviet Economics. The first was delivered as a speech to the CCP in 1957 as part of a rectification campaign and partly as Mao’s response to Khrushchev’s speech. The speech was described by the Trotsky-influenced author, Isaac Deutscher as “by far the most radical repudiation of Stalinism that has come out of any communist country so far.”24 In the speech, Mao elaborated on his earlier writings dealing with contradiction by noting that contradictions continue under socialism. But there are actually two sets of contradictions, those among the people and those between the people and the enemy, both of which needed to be handled differently. “The contradictions between ourselves and the enemy are antagonistic contradictions. Within the ranks of the people, the contradictions among the working people are nonantagonistic, while those between the exploited and the exploiting classes have a nonantagonistic as well as an antagonistic aspect.”25 This implied a repudiation of Soviet practice which handled contradictions among the people as like contradictions between the people and the enemy. Furthermore, Mao believed that the class struggle continued under socialism, as opposed to mechanical communists who believed that with the seizure of power that the basic class struggle had ended. Yet Mao emphasized that the class struggle would take different forms under socialism. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between the various political forces, and the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the ideological field will still be protracted and tortuous and at times even very sharp. The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook, and so does the bourgeoisie. In this respect, the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, is not really settled yet.26 And the way Stalin and the Soviets handled contradictions among the people was also a reflection of the weaknesses of their revolutionary practice. As the Chinese CP would later say in

their polemics with the USSR, while upholding the positive accomplished under Stalin, they also stressed that “Stalin departed from dialectical materialism and fell into metaphysics and subjectivism on certain questions and consequently he was sometimes divorced from reality and from the masses. In struggles inside as well as outside the Party, on certain occasions and on certain questions he confused two types of contradictions which are different in nature, contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people, and also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the work led by Stalin of suppressing the counter-revolution, many counter-revolutionaries deserving punishment were duly punished, but at the same time there were innocent people who were wrongly convicted; and in 1937 and 1938 there occurred the error of enlarging the scope of the suppression of counter-revolutionaries. In the matter of Party and government organization, he did not fully apply proletarian democratic centralism and, to some extent, violated it. In handling relations with fraternal Parties and countries, he made some mistakes. He also gave some bad counsel in the international communist movement. These mistakes caused some losses to the Soviet Union and the international communist movement.”27 What Mao’s A Critique of Soviet Economics (which also criticized Stalin’s Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR) was part of Mao’s forging a new socialist path in China in light of the mounting break with the USSR and following the Great Leap Forward and all the problems associated therein. Revolutionary fervor in the Communist Party was being replaced by the creeping winds of conservatism. Those conservatives in the Party seemed to be eager to copy the Soviet model with its commandism and bureaucracy. To Mao, those methods smacked of capitalism, not socialism. While Mao’s work looked at how the USSR had engaged in primitive socialist accumulation, or how the nation built up its industry and collectivized agriculture. To Mao, although Soviet achievements in these fields were undeniable, they were largely conducted at the level of economics and neglected politics, ideology and culture or the superstructure. This textbook addresses itself only to material preconditions and seldom engages the question of the superstructure, i.e., the class nature of the state, philosophy, and science. In economics the main object of study is the production relations. All the same, political economy and the materialist historical outlook are close cousins. It is difficult to deal clearly with problems of the economic base and the production relations if the question of the superstructure is neglected.28 And Mao also believed that the Soviets denied the role of contradiction in socialism, stating: “In the era of socialism, contradictions remain the motive force of social development.”29 This was something that the Soviets did not recognize. There were bourgeois survivals in the superstructure (commandism, bureaucracy, etc.) that conflicted with new emerging proletariat political, cultural and ideological ideas. It was not enough to just develop the economy, but the masses had to be involved. To Mao and any self-respecting communist, the masses wanted

revolution and communism. Therefore, if they were properly led, they would combat the bourgeois survivals and institute new proletariat modes of politics, ideology and ideology. This lack of recognition of the contradictions in socialism meant that the USSR had a one-sided method of developing the economy through bureaucratic and commandist methods. These methods were clear in how the Soviets treated the peasantry were certainly bourgeois holdovers. Mao recognized that even in socialism that were would be a struggle between old and new ideas. Yet the Soviets seemed to believe that as the standard of living improved through economic development that old bourgeois ideas would simply die out. To Mao, this was not so. The communist revolution wasn’t just about changing the economy, but about forging new political, ideological, and cultural values appropriate to communism. These new values would spontaneously emerge with economic development like Athena from the head of Zeus. Nor could these new values be commanded or forced upon the people. Rather, to Mao, these values could only emerge through the participation of the masses themselves in the process. For instance, the USSR collectivized the countryside at the expense of the peasantry. In fact, the peasants were not the driving force of the collectivization movement, but were simply told that they must be collectivized by the Soviet party. This was in contrast to the Chinese party’s dealings with the peasantry, which “did quite the reverse. We put a mass line into effect, roused the poor and lower-middle peasants to launch class struggle and seize all the land of the landlord class and distribute the surplus land of rich peasants.”30 By contrast, the bureaucratic behavior of the Soviets in dealing with the peasantry caused them to pay a “heavy price.”31 For Mao, it wasn’t enough to simply change the relations of production in the countryside as the USSR had done (although this was necessary). You needed to change the ideas of the masses, which with new communist ideas would in turn increase productivity and build communism. This was exactly what Mao sought to do in the Great Leap Forward. During Stalin’s time, the masses were often distrusted and handed down their instructions by party fiat. The relationship between long- and short-term interests has not seen any spectacular developments. They walk on one leg, we walk on two. They believe that technology decides everything, that cadres decide everything, speaking only of “expert,” never of “red,” only of the cadres, never of the masses. This is walking on one leg.32 The Soviet method of governing and building socialism from above not only encouraged a technocratic and commandist road to socialism that neglected putting politics in command, but this method meant that socialism in the USSR was distorted in favor of heavy industry to the expense of agriculture and light industry. Flowing naturally from the above is that the communist revolution is an all-around process, affecting both the economic base and the superstructure. Central to the communist revolution was that (communist and mass) politics be in command. The communist revolution had to recognize that there were contradictions between base and superstructure, town and country,

worker and peasant, manual and mental labor, and leader and led during the whole transition period. Building communism means putting into practice the mass line, investigating and concentrating the scattered ideas of the masses and communicating them back until the masses take up as their own. In the process, the revolutionaries fuse with the masses and involve them in revolution. Furthermore, in building communism, Mao believed in line with the Soviet experience that developing heavy industry was essential. Yet he also believed that the Soviets put too much emphasis on heavy industry, so that light industry and agriculture were neglected and the masses suffered because of this. Mao urged that growth be more balanced with light industry and agriculture not being neglected in favor of heavy industry. It was necessary to develop heavy industry because it was in the long-range interests of the people, but also to combine their immediate needs. Mao grasped this connection. This was in contrast to Soviet planning which often didn’t put the needs of the masses in the forefront and was lopsided. Mao’s critique of Soviet methods of planning also extended to what he saw as their one-sided reliance on material incentives. Material incentives to Mao were a bourgeois survival that did not raise consciousness of the masses. For the Soviets, planning was about things, not people. For Mao, planning (and communism) meant that there had to be conscious activity by both the party and the masses. What Mao would come to recognize as the 1960s wore on was that there were those in the Chinese party (and in the Soviet), who rely upon bourgeois survivals and seek a return to capitalism. Yet these ideas were not fully developed when Mao wrote the Critique, yet he was developing in that direction. If it was necessary to involve the masses in the building of a communist society and combating the old ideas of the bourgeois which could survive even in the party, might that lead to a clash? In China, that led to more than a clash, but to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

Poster from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

e. Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution It is not possible to discuss the Cultural Revolution at length here, but a few words need to be said. The Cultural Revolution was the culmination of the Maoist two-line struggle with capitalist roaders within the CCP. And it brought together the many ideas Mao had developed over the previous decades: contradiction, the interaction of base and superstructure, continuing revolution under socialism, reliance on the masses, and his whole critique of the Soviet experience. The Cultural Revolution was described in the Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (or the 16 Points) to guide the Cultural Revolution as follows: “Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavour to stage a comeback. The proletariat must do the exact opposite: it must meet head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie in the ideological field and use the new ideas, culture, customs and habits of the proletariat to change the mental outlook of the whole of society. At present, our objective is to struggle against and overthrow those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois academic “authorities” and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art and all other parts of the superstructure not in correspondence with the socialist economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system.”33 In other words, the Cultural Revolution was part of an attack by the masses on the superstructure to remove bourgeois forces within the party who threatened to restore capitalism in order to continue along the revolutionary road. And while it is common nowadays by many, including the far left to view the Cultural Revolution as one of persecutions, abuses and economic stagnation, this was in fact a mass upheaval. There were many innovative aspects to the Cultural Revolution with factories reorganized, facilitating greater involvement by the masses and increases in production. The arts were also transformed. Education at all levels was revamped to allow for greater mass involvement. Ordinary people in the Cultural Revolution were encouraged to experiment, to act, and to think.34 The effects of Maoism revitalization of communism and the Cultural Revolution were not limited to China however. Following the 1963 breach with the USSR, the Chinese presented an open challenge to Soviet Marxism and their allied Communist Parties. And this reached all the way to France where engagement with Maoism encouraged Louis Althusser in his own efforts to develop a revolutionary alternative from within the Soviet-aligned French Communist Party. Louis Althusser

Communist Party of France.

a. The French Communist Party In 1948, Louis Althusser, a former member of the right-wing Catholic Jeunesse Étudiante Chrétienne and philosophy student, joined the French Communist Party (PCF). The relationship with Althusser and the PCF would be fraught with discord (both open and concealed) for the next several decades. Although the PCF was the second largest communist party in Western Europe, commanding a quarter of the electorate and the allegiance of the organized working class, it was far from being a revolutionary organization. Although the PCF had lost thousands of militants and played a leading role in the anti-Nazi resistance, it had not made any effort to seize power upon the liberation, giving the party great prestige, but had followed the leadership of De Gaulle in reestablishing the French bourgeois republic and surrendered its arms. Despite its militant rhetoric and resort to extra-parliamentary tactics at times, the PCF had no intention of making revolution. As Sartre said of the PCF: “When a so-called revolutionary party with five million armed members or followers refuses to seize power, it can no longer claim to be revolutionary. By 1947, every Frenchman knew that the CP had become a traditional party in a bourgeois state, reformist perhaps, revolutionary certainly not.”35 Yet for Althusser, Sartre, and so many other intellectuals, there was no opportunity for real political engagement outside the PCF, unless one was willing to work in tiny left sects. Althusser remained within the Communist Party as the anti-colonial revolts in Indochina and especially in Algeria revealed the limits of its anti-imperialism. At the beginning of the Algerian War, the Socialist Party under Guy Mollet sent conscripts to put down the FLN. Instead of moving into opposition, the “PCF would again support the government, and declared… Peace must be reestablished in Algeria.” 36While it is true that the PCF did come around to supporting Algerian independence, this support was tepid and half-hearted. The party

rejected the ‘harmful’ attitudes of gauchiste [leftist] elements who had preached insubordination, desertion, and rejection of the very fundamentals of the national community and the national interest of the working class in peace. Their irresponsible actions, the party argued in 1962 and in 1968, had only served to assist the policies and the provocations of the Gaullist regime and the ultras.37 Instead of pursuing a militant antiwar strategy, the PCF was more interested in staying respectful, something that the growing French New Left (including Trotskyists and Maoists) took issue with. The PCF was not willing to entertain oppositional ideas within its ranks either. The Party, proclaiming its allegiance to the political ideas and foreign policy of the Soviet Union, maintained a stranglehold on intellectual debate, enforcing a rigid dogma. For Althusser and other party critics, it was only possible to conduct debate within the PCF in code or underground, not in the open (since that risked expulsion). Althusser bore this all in silence. Yet following the 20th Congress of the CPSU where Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and the “cult of personality,” caused a major shake-up in the PCF. Initially, the leadership of the French Party bulked at the new line, but eventually came around to accepting it (since the PCF leadership hoped to build an alliance with the Socialist Party). The new Soviet line promoted a line of peaceful coexistence between east and west, and the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism which was soon adapted by the French. According to Gregory Elliot, the PCF’s adjustment to the Khrushchevite line arose not simply from fidelity to the bastion of world socialism, but because there was an underlying compatibility between the imperatives of ‘internationalism’ and domestic horizons. Regardless of its official doctrine, the PCF had, in a sense, been pursuing an analogous line, in impeccably French colours, ever since the Popular Front.38 Philosophically, the new line in the international Communist Movement was being promoted using the language of humanism and a return to Hegel and the works of the Young Marx with their emphasis on alienation. Humanism was being used by both the Soviets and the PCF to pursue a right-wing revisionist and social democratic line. The promotion of “Socialist Humanism” would be one of the battering rams that the pro-Soviet parties would use against China following the split in the ICM.39 Yet the liberalization of the 20th Congress allowed open debate after decades of sterile orthodoxy. As Althusser would later say “I would never have written anything were it not for the Twentieth Congress and Khrushchev’s critique of Stalinism and the subsequent liberalisation. But I would never have written these books if I had not seen this affair as a bungled destalinisation, a rightwing destalinisation which instead of analyses offered us only incantations; which instead of Marxist concepts had available only the poverty of bourgeois ideology. My target was therefore clear: these humanist ravings, these feeble dissertations on liberty, labour or alienation which were the effects of all this among French Party intellectuals. And my aim was equally clear: to make a start on the first left-wing critique of Stalinism, a critique that would make it possible to reflect not only on Khrushchev and Stalin but also on Prague and

Lin Piao: that would above all help put some substance back into the revolutionary project here in the West.”40 Althusser’s claim to have developed the “first left-wing critique of Stalinism” is frankly wrong and shows an ignorance of other Marxists who had undertaken that project (such as Trotsky). Yet Althusser was working with the intellectual tools that he had at his disposal within the Party and the wider Communist Movement. Althusser’s effort to revitalize Marxism and (in philosophical language) attack the PCF and USSR from the left found an echo in China. And in fact, as Althusser’s criticism deepened, he developed an increasing affinity for Mao.

Althusser carrying a banner during a demonstration.

b. Theoretical Practice Althusser hoped to put the PCF back on solid revolutionary foundations so that the Party could fulfill its revolutionary mission. However, Althusser was not willing at one point to politically break with the PCF or build an opposition caucus within it (many budding Maoists, inspired by Althusser, did both). And this would ultimately constrain both his theoretical and political practice. As Elliot says, But the price to be paid for a party card and for theory’s immunity was high: assent – or silence – on political issues. On the other hand, if at a stroke, Althusser abolished the problem of the union of theory and practice, it was in the name of future political practice. The Marxist workers’ movement needed scientific theory in order to ‘change the world.’ Protected from the ravages of official pragmatism and opportunism, a detour via theory – at this time and in this place – was no diversion from the struggle, but the long-term, practically motivated continuation of politics by other means.41

Althusser’s engagement with the ideas of Mao in his effort to put Marxism back on scientific foundations appears in his essays, “Contradiction and Overdetermination” and “On the Materialist Dialectic” found in For Marx. And while Althusser builds on Lenin’s ideas to elaborate the concepts of conjuncture and “key links,” he discusses at length (without mentioning him by name) Mao’s essay On Contradiction. Althusser’s “Contradiction and Overdetermination” rejects the Hegelian dialectic and says they have “a structure different from the structure they have for Hegel. It also means that these structural differences can be demonstrated, described, determined and thought. And if this is possible, it is therefore necessary, I would go so far as to say vital, for Marxism.”42 And while Althusser builds on Lenin’s ideas to elaborate the concepts of conjuncture and “key links,” he discusses at length (without mentioning him by name) Mao’s essay On Contradiction. Althusser follows Mao in stating that society is made of a number of contradictions, of which one is primary and the others are secondary (and within the principal one, one aspect is primary and the other is secondary): “Two are concepts of distinction: (1) the distinction between the principal contradiction and the secondary contradictions, (2) the distinction between the principal aspect and the secondary aspect of each contradiction. The third and last concept: (3) the uneven development of contradiction. These concepts are presented to us as if ‘that’s how it is’. We are told that they are essential to the Marxist dialectic, since they are what is specific about it. It is up to us to seek out the deeper theoretical reasons behind these claims.”43 This means that society possesses a complex unity with its manifold contradictions that develop unevenly under different contradictions. However, Althusser develops the concept of overdetermination (from Freudian psychoanalysis) which means “the representation of the dream-thoughts in images privileged by their condensation of a number of thoughts in a single image.”44 Althusser says that a contradiction is overdetermined is reflection of its existence in a complex whole where other contradictions exist and unevenly develop together. In an overdetermined contradiction, there is “displacement and condensation [which]… explain by their dominance the phases (non-antagonistic, antagonistic and explosive) which constitute the existence of the complex process, that is, ‘of the development of things’”45 which ultimately means the various elements of a complex whole develop unevenly and that different ones are dominant at a particular moment. Althusser goes and claims, following Engels, that in a social formation that the economic is determinant in the “last instance.” However, Althusser says that From the first moment to the last, the lonely hour of the ‘last instance’ never comes.” Althusser is not saying that economics don’t play a determining role, rather he is stating that “the economic dialectic is never active in the pure state; in History, these instances, the superstructures, etc. – are never seen to step respectfully aside when their work is done or, when the Time comes, as his pure phenomena, to scatter before His Majesty the Economy as he strides along the royal road of the Dialectic.46

In other words, the economic is never active by itself, but is active through other contradictions because the other contradictions of a complex whole are never able to step aside. Althusser would later develop this idea in order to critique other Marxists (such as Stalin and the PCF) for believing in historical and economic determinism based on the development of productive forces or economism while ignoring the relatively autonomous role of the superstructure and other contradictions in social and historical change, which prevented them from developing appropriate revolutionary strategies. And as we shall see, Althusser would also use these ideas as part of a developing critique of Soviet socialism. And Althusser was at pains to state that “It is to claim that the complex whole has the unity of a structure articulated in dominance. In the last resort this specific structure is the basis for the relations of domination between contradictions and between their aspects that Mao described as essential. This principle must be grasped and intransigently defended if Marxism is not to slip back into the confusions from which it had delivered us, that is, into a type of thought for which only one model of unity exists: the unity of a substance, of an essence or of an act; into the twin confusions of ‘mechanistic’ materialism and the idealism of consciousness.”47 This open (and not-so-open) advocacy of Mao not only helped to sharpen the tools for the Maoists within the PCF, but it also brought Althusser into conflict with the party. In 1963, Althusser’s two essays resulted him being brought to “trial” by the Party. Although Althusser managed to defend his use of Mao’s ideas by claiming that the CCP was misusing them, he wound up conceding and defending the PCF’s line.48 This highlighted a pattern which would be repeatedly followed by Althusser: he was brought to heel by the Party for being too independent, but never enough to leave its orbit – in contrast to the Maoists inspired by him. And ultimately, it would reveal the fatal defect of his whole project. Althusser’s elaborations in Contradiction and Over-determination and On the Materialist Dialectic had the potential to lead to a revitalization of Marxist theory and practice beyond anything claimed by the PCF. However, his idea of theoretical practice – which dialectical materialism was the theory of – was bound to hamper his practical efforts. Althusser, following Marx, viewed society as dissected into four moments: political, economic, ideological and social (each of which was relatively autonomous). Each of these practices had a general method of practice: “By practice in general I shall mean any process of transformation of a determinate given raw material into a determinate product, a transformation effected by a determinate human labour, using a determinate means (of ‘production’). In any practice thus conceived, the determinant moment (or element) is neither the raw material nor the product, but the practice in the narrow sense: the moment of the labour of transformation itself, which sets to work, in a specific structure, men, means and a technical method of utilizing the means.”49 Theoretical practice was a form of production divided into three “generalities.” Generalities I are abstract concepts that are related to one another and the raw material of science; Generalities II

are a theory of science (i.e. Marxism) which are used on the raw material at hand; Generalities III is the end result, or the knowledge produced.50 However, Althusser made Marxist philosophy the guarantor of Marxist science, something that was quite dogmatic. Yet as Gregory Elliot says, Althusser sought to have it both ways: “In order to justify his proposal for a sui generis Marxist philosophy, Althusser invoked historical precedent, maintaining that philosophical revolutions were attendant upon – ‘induced by’ – scientific revolutions. Thus, just as Greek mathematics had given rise to Platonic, and Galilean physics to Cartesian, philosophy, so historical had ‘induced’ dialectical materialism. Its advent post festum conformed to the pattern set by its predecessors. Involved in all of them was ‘the “reprise” of a basic scientific discovery in philosophical reflection and the production by philosophy of a new form of rationality’. Marxist philosophy was, however, primus inter pares. The novelty of dialectical materialism was that with its arrival philosophy had passed ‘from the condition of an ideology [to] a scientific discipline’ – one capable of rendering a scientific account of its object: the history of the production of knowledge. By virtue of his ‘double theoretical revolution’, Marx occupied an ‘exceptional position . . . in the history of human knowledge’. As a scientific philosophy, dialectical materialism could function as a ‘guide’ not only for the science of history, imperiled as it was by garaudysme and so on, but, if needs be, for all the other sciences – natural and social alike – as well.”51 More than that, Althusser’s schema of the generalities for theoretical practice could, if taken to their extreme, lead to a divorce of theory and practice. Yet that wasn’t Althusser’s intention though, what he was doing was defending “the thesis of the relative autonomy of theory and thus the right of Marxist theory not to be treated as a slave to tactical political decisions, but to be allowed to develop, in alliance with political and other practices, without betraying its own needs.”52 In other words, Althusser was pushing for the relative autonomy of theory in order for it development outside of the constraints of the PCF’s tactical maneuvers. As Elliot describes, “The Marxist workers’ movement needed scientific theory in order to ‘change the world.’ Protected from the ravages of official pragmatism and opportunism, a detour via theory – at this time and in this place – was no diversion from the struggle, but the long-term, practically motivated continuation of politics by other means.”53 It was a moment that never came for Althusser.

Breaking with ossified theory and practice.

c. Althusser on the Cultural Revolution Despite the bind Althusser created for himself, he remained caught between the PCF apparatus and the Maoist opposition which came to a head in 1966. In that year, a number of Maoists were expelled from the PCF many of them Althusser’s students, and in December they formed Union des jeunesses communistes marxistes-léninistes (UJCML). Two months later, they formed the Union des communistes francais marxistes-leninistes (UCF-ML), one of the first Maoist organizations in France.54 At the time of the split, the Cultural Revolution had begun in China and the UJCML had an article published on it in their journal. The article, although anonymously authored, was actually written by Althusser. And it was here that Althusser’s ideas on overdetermination, contradiction, and critique of economism found themselves reflected in Maoism. Althusser hailed the Cultural Revolution as “not, first of all, an argument: it is first and foremost an historical fact. It is not one fact among others. It is an unprecedented fact.”55 The fact proven by the Cultural Revolution, in line with claim that the different levels of society develop unevenly that Marx, Engels and Lenin always proclaimed it was absolutely necessary to give the socialist infrastructure, established by a political revolution, a corresponding—that is, socialist— ideological superstructure. For this to occur, an ideological revolution is necessary, a revolution in the ideology of the masses.”56 While socialist revolution took the means of production and established a base of nationalized industry, this did not mean that a socialist superstructure would naturally follow. To believe this was to fall into economism. Rather, the Cultural Revolution showed: In socialist countries, after the more or less complete socialist transformation of the property of the means of production, there is still this question that remains: what road is

to be taken? Is it necessary to go all the way to the end of the socialist revolution and gradually pass over into communism? Or, to the contrary, stop halfway and go backwards toward capitalism? This question is being posed to us in a particular acute manner.” 57 Socialism was not a forward march, rather its development in conditions of capitalist encirclement and the development of internal contradictions opened up two roads: one that continued towards communism and another back to capitalism. Along with the economic and political revolutions which have established socialism, “The C.C.P. declares that in order to reinforce and develop socialism in China, in order to assure its future and protect it in a lasting way from every risk of regression, it must add a third revolution to the prior political and economic revolutions: a mass ideological revolution.”58 The Cultural Revolution’s ultimate aim is to transform the ideology of the masses, to replace the feudal, bourgeois and petit-bourgeois ideology that still permeates the masses of Chinese society with a new ideology of the masses, proletarian and socialist — and in this way to give the socialist economic infrastructure and political superstructure a corresponding ideological superstructure.”59 In other words, by overthrowing those in the Party taking the capitalist road, the masses would transform the superstructure which in turn could influence the base and continue on the road to communism. The reason for the primacy of ideology in China’s GPCR was that it was not to attack just a few bad eggs in the party or wayward intellectuals, but to transform the ideology of the masses through struggle: “Now, such a transformation of the ideology of the masses can only be the work of the masses themselves, acting in and through organizations that are mass organizations.”60 The important role of ideology in the Cultural Revolution essay, is something that Althusser would emphasize again with more theoretical rigor, with the Ideological State Apparatuses in his On the Reproduction of Capitalism. And echoes of that position can be seen in this earlier essay. When Althusser notes that during the GPCR that it is young people, particularly students, who are the vanguard, he notes the importance of education in reproducing the dominant ideology: On the one hand, in fact, the teaching system in place for the education of the youth (we should not forget that school deeply marks men, even during periods of historical mutation), was in China a bastion of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois ideology. On the other hand, the youth, which has not experienced revolutionary struggles and wars, constitutes, in a socialist country, a very delicate matter, a place where the future is in large part played out. The youth is not revolutionary solely by the fact of being born in a socialist country, nor from growing up hearing stories of the exploits of its elders. If, despite all the energies of its age, it finds itself, due to political failings, abandoned to an ideological disarray or “void,” it is then given over to “spontaneous” ideological forms that ceaselessly fill in this “void”: bourgeois and petit-bourgeois ideologies, whether inherited from its own national past, or imported from without. These forms find their natural points of support in the

positivism, empiricism and “apolitical” technicism of scholars and other specialists. In return, if a socialist country assigns its youth a great revolutionary task and if it educates them for this action, not only will the youth contribute, in the C.R., to the transformation of the existing ideology, it will educate itself and transform its own ideology. It is on the youth that ideology, of whatever sort, has the most impact.”61 This attack on bourgeois survivals of the superstructure thus opens the road to greater revolutionization of the dominant ideology and a way to continue the forward motion of the revolution. It is in the ideological class struggle that the fate (progress or regression) of a socialist country is played out.62 Althusser also upholds the Chinese concept of “regression” back to capitalism because Marxism is not an evolutionary or economistic philosophy. However, evolutionary forms of Marxism can not recognize this, because they don’t understand that “the historical dialectic allows for lags [décalages], distortions, regressions without repetition, leaps, etc.”63 Althusser also attacks “evolutionary” Marxists who deny the role of the primacy of ideology and for their limited definition of class. Althusser’s elaboration of social class is worth quoting at length: “A social class is not defined, in fact, solely by the positions of its members in the relations of production and therefore by the relations of production: it is also defined, at the same time, by their position in political and ideological relations, which remain class relations long after the socialist transformation of the relations of production. There is no doubt that the economic (the relations of production) defines a social class in the last instance, but class struggle constitutes a system and is at work at different levels (economic, political, ideological); the transformation of one level does not make the forms of class struggle at the other levels disappear. In this way, class struggle can continue quite virulently at the political level, and above all the ideological level, long after the more or less complete suppression of the economic bases of the property-owning classes in a socialist country. It is, then, essentially in relation to the forms of political and especially ideological class struggle that social classes are defined: depending on the side they take in political and ideological struggles.”64 In fact, Althusser’s attack“economistic” forms of socialism in his Cultural Revolution essay forms the basis of his criticism of Stalin and the “Stalinian deviation.” While Althusser, like Maoists generally upheld Stalin’s contributions in building socialism in one country, industrializing the USSR, and defeating the Nazis, and transmitting Marxism-Leninism to millions of communists (albeit in a dogmatic form).65 And yet Althusser also claimed that Stalin or the “Stalinian deviation” was a form of economism that had afflicted the Communist movement since the 1930s and was “the posthumous revenge of the Second International : as a revival of its main tendency.”66

Stalin.

d. The “Stalinian Deviation” For Stalin and the USSR, from 1930-32 at least, was characterized by “the consistent politics of the primacy of the productive forces over the relations of production.” 67 And this effected the whole of Soviet politics that developed during this period – planning, relation to the peasantry, the role of the party, promotion of breakneck industrialization. Now while Althusser believed this was perhaps necessary (and unavoidable) due to the capitalist encirclement of the USSR, it did have horrifying consequences such as the purges of the 1930s.68 And on the theoretical level, the Stalinian deviation encouraged economic evolutionism in pedagogical texts such as Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism, “the conjuring away of the historical role of Trotsky and others in the Bolshevik Revolution (Short History of the CPSU [B]); the thesis of the sharpening of the class struggle under socialism; the formula: “everything depends on the cadres”, etc. Among ourselves: the thesis of “bourgeois science/proletarian science”, the thesis of “absolute pauperization”, etc.”69 So far from promoting a return to the politics of Stalin, Althusser believed that a Marxist critique of it was necessary, in both theory and practice. And Althusser argued that the Secret Speech of Nikita Khrushchev was not actually a left-wing critique of Stalin, but a rightist one since it attributed all of Stalin’s errors to the “cult of personality” and did not uncover the deeper issues which caused the deviation: “Now this pseudo-concept, the circumstances of whose solemn and dramatic pronouncement are well known, did indeed expose certain practices: “abuses”, “errors”, and in certain cases “crimes”. But it explained nothing of their conditions, of their causes, in short of their internal determination, and therefore of their forms. Yet since it claimed to

explain what in fact it did not explain, this pseudo-concept could only mislead those whom it was supposed to instruct. Must we be even more explicit? To reduce the grave events of thirty years of Soviet and Communist history to this pseudo-explanation by the “cult” was not and could not have been a simple mistake, an oversight of an intellectual hostile to the practice of divine worship: it was, as we all know, a political act of responsible leaders, a certain one-sided way of putting forward the problems, not of what is vulgarly called “Stalinism”, but of what must, I think, be called (unless one objects to thinking about it) by the name of a concept: provisionally, the “Stalinian” deviation.”70 What was necessary in contrast was to look at the contradictions of socialism that had produced it. Whereas the Secret Speech just looked at the defects of the legal apparatus, he neglected to look at the role of the Ideological State Apparatuses (more below), the Repressive State Apparatuses, and the existing relations of production, class struggle, etc. In other words, only external and surface phenomena were analyzed, not the deeper internal causes – which are necessary for a Marxist critique of Stalin.71 However, since the Secret Speech did not do that, it was a right-wing critique of Stalin and had inevitable ideological effects – encouraging humanism, bourgeois forms of thought in the USSR, Eastern Europe and Communist Parties. According to Althusser, Communists were following the Social-Democrats and even religious thinkers (who used to have an almost guaranteed monopoly in these things) in the practice of exploiting the works of Marx’s youth in order to draw out of them an ideology of Man, Liberty, Alienation, Transcendence, etc. — without asking whether the system of these notions was idealist or materialist, whether this ideology was petty-bourgeois or proletarian.72 This was a step backward for Marxists and Communists around the world. Rather, what was needed was a left-wing critique of Stalin, USSR and the practice of the Communist Parties. This was something that the Chinese Revolution, and especially the Cultural Revolution, did in practice (and what Althusser was doing in theory). Althusser summed up the Chinese as offering a silent critique, which speaks through its actions, the result of the political and ideological struggles of the Revolution, from the Long March to the Cultural Revolution and its results. A critique from afar. A critique “from behind the scenes”. To be looked at more closely, to be interpreted. A contradictory critique, moreover — if only because of the disproportion between acts and texts. Whatever you like: but a critique from which one can learn, which can help us to test our hypotheses, that is, help us to see our own history more clearly. But here too, of course, we have to speak in terms of a tendency and of specific forms — without letting the forms mask the tendency and its contradictions.73 So what made the Chinese Revolution (and by extension his own theory) the first “left-wing critique of Stalin” according to Althusser”? Whereas Althusser rejected Trotskyist criticisms of Stalinism as “explaining nothing,”74 the Cultural Revolution, by contrast, had provided in both

theory and practice, a repudiation of the economism, primacy of productive forces, humanism, evolutionism and rightism that characterized Soviet Marxism. Thus, it was through the Cultural Revolution that Althusser saw many elements of his critique of Soviet and PCF Marxism realized: the over-determined nature of contradictions in society (in this case socialism), an attack on evolutionary or economist Marxists, its anti-teleological nature (that the victory of communism was not guaranteed via the development of the productive forces), and its bold new forms of revolutionary practice in the mass organizations, and the central role of ideology.

Louis Althusser

e. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses We have made a brief mention of Althusser’s discussion of the importance of ideology during the GPCR, however, let us return to how he saw ideology operating under capitalism. Althusser’s idea of the ISAs were written about most clearly in 1969 in response to the French student strikes of the previous year. There he discusses modes of production with their four theses: 1. The dominance of one mode of production in society, 2. the unity between the relations and forces of production, 3. In order for the productive forces to be able to reproduced, this needs to be done within the relations of production, 4. That the economic base is determinant in the last instance.75 However, in line with his earlier work, Althusser emphasized that a mode of production was made up complex and interacting practices existing in unity. Althusser also highlights the importance of this understanding not only for capitalism, but for socialist revolution: “The mode of production of a class society … is quite the opposite of a mere technical process of production. At the same time as it is the locus of production, it is the locus of class exploitation and of class struggle as well. It is in the productive process of the mode of production itself that the knot of class relations and the class struggle bound up with exploitation is tied. This class struggle pits the proletarian class struggle against the capitalist class struggle… It is easy to understand the capitalists’ interest in depicting the process of production as the opposite of what it is: as a purely technical rather than an exploitative process… It is also easy to understand that the destiny of every class struggle, the victorious revolutionary class struggle included, ultimately depends on an accurate

conception of the relations of production. To “build socialism”, it will be necessary to establish new relations of production that abolish concretely, the exploitative effects of the previous relations of production, together with their class effects. The construction of socialism can therefore not be settled with purely legal formulas: ownership of the means of production plus better technical organization of the labour process.”76 Althusser is concerned in this work with how capitalism is reproduced. Of paramount importance to the reproduction of capitalism is the role of ideology which Althusser believes are not mistaken ideas, but exist in definite material practices: “Ideology does not exist in the ‘world of ideas’ conceived as a ‘spiritual world’. Ideology exists in institutions and the practices specific to them. We are even tempted to say, more precisely: ideology exists in apparatuses and the practices specific to them.”77 Ideology exists through the Ideological State Apparatuses, which although private – churches, schools, families, etc they reinforce the rule of the bourgeoisie through ideology. And it is through the ISAs that capitalist society is reproduced, not in the factory: “Now, however, we are entering a domain in which observing what goes on in the enterprise is, if not totally blind, then very nearly so, and for good reason: the reproduction of labor power takes place essentially outside the enterprise.” 78 And according to Althusser, following the GPCR and May 1968, the “one Ideological State Apparatus certainly has the dominant role, although hardly anyone lends an ear to its music: it is so silent! This is the School.”79 Ideology in this conception becomes a lived practice – producing people as subjects who obey the law, do their civic duty, shaping our beliefs in line with the social institutions we are born and we live within. Contrary to some critics, Althusser does not believe that the role of the ISAs denies human agency. Rather, the ISAs are necessary not only because the rule of the bourgeois can not be secured only by force, but due to the constant of class struggle. “Just as the class struggle never ceases, so the dominant class’s combat to unify existing ideological elements and forms never ceases. This amounts to saying the dominant ideology can never completely resolve its own contradictions, which are a reflection of the class struggle – although its function is to resolve them.”80 Just as there is conflict in the workplace, Althusser argues that there is also struggle within ideology, which is contested by class struggle. And that imposes specific demands on the communist movement in dealing with the bourgeois and their ideology. The working class’s great strategic demand for autonomy reflects this condition. Subjected to the domination of the bourgeois state and the effect of intimidation and ‘self-evidence’ of the dominant ideology, the working class can win its autonomy only on condition that it free itself from the dominant ideology, that it demarcate itself from it, in order to endow itself with forms of organization and action that realize its own ideology, proletarian ideology. Characteristic of this break, this radical distance taken, is the fact that it can be achieved only by a protracted struggle which must take the forms of bourgeois domination into account and combat the bourgeoisie within its own forms of domination, but without ever being ‘taken in’ by the game represented by these forms, which are not simple, neutral ‘forms,’ but apparatuses that realize the existence of the dominant ideology.81

What Althusser said of the danger of being ‘taken in’ by dominant ideology could easily be applied to the Communist Party and their role during the May 1968 strikes. It is beyond the scope of this essay to give a detailed account of the event. However, in May-June, France was hit with a massive general strike of more than ten million students and workers. The strike, represented (potentially) a revolutionary challenge to capitalism in France. However, the PCF did not champion the strike or make preparations for revolution, despite their own professed program, rather they did everything withing their power to keep the movement within bourgeois forms of legality and economic struggle for better wages. Ultimately, the capitalist order in France stabilized and the moment passed. Yet there was a parting of ways between Althusser and the Maoists. While Althusser was hospitalized during the May Strike, and did not directly participate, he did later write and justify the PCF’s stand – drawing the ire of his former students and the Maoist movement.82 Althusser could not bring himself to break with the Party. And he remained within its non-revolutionary orbit as the PCF ultimately embraced Eurocommunism, formally abandoned any pretense of socialist revolution and sunk into the electoral margins. The Maoists in France, whether in the UJC, gauche proletarienne (GP), Vive la revolution! (VLR) would break out on their own path – seeking to keep the fires of May alive.83 Yet they would do so without Althusser. Despite Althusser’s aspirations, his project of developing a revolutionary praxis for the PCF was doomed because that party was on a rightward trajectory and had no intention of ever leading a revolution, as its actions in May 1968 made abundantly clear. The only chance Althusser had for developing a revolutionary praxis as outside of the Communist Party, as his Maoist-oriented students learned, but he never did. Conclusion The Chinese Revolution, GPCR, and Maoism, far from being another species of “Stalinism,” were in fact a challenge to the inherited forms of Soviet Marxism. Maoism, in its innovative philosophy, development of the mass line, its road to revolution and for recognizing the contradictions which continue to exist under socialism provided a “left-wing” critique in both theory and practice of the USSR and their allied Communist Parties. Louis Althusser saw in the Chinese revolution kindred spirits to his own effort to reinvigorate Marxism and chart a new revolutionary road for the French Communist Party. What ultimately spelled the doom of Althusser’s project was that he didn’t take this commitment far enough and remained within the confines of the PCF and was unable to develop a revolutionary practice. Notes 1 Louis Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism (New Left Books: London, 1976), 92. 2 Parts of this section include rewritten portions of my own essays on Mao, notably: “Mao Zedong’s “On Practice,”” Enaadoug. https://enaadoug.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/mao-zedung %E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Con-practice%E2%80%9D/ ; Leon Trotsky and Mao Zedong on Revolution: New Democracy and Permanent Revolution,” Enaadoug. https://enaadoug.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/leon-trotsky-and-mao-zedung-on-revolution-new-

democracy-and-permanent-revolution/ ; “Theory of the Offensive,” Kasama Project. http://www.kasamaproject.org/threads/entry/theory-of-the-offensive ; “Enaa review: Mao’s Critique of Soviet Economics,” Kasama Project. http://kasamaproject.org/politicaleconomy/3299-31enaa-review-mao-039-s-critique-of-soviet-economics 3 On Practice, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (henceforth SWM) I.300. 4 Ibid. 304. 5 Ibid. 308. 6 On Contradiction, MSW I. 311. 7 Ibid. 314. 8 Ibid. 320. 9 Ibid. 331. 10 Ibid. 332. 11 Ibid. 333. 12 Ibid. 335-6. 13 Where Do Correct Ideas Come From? “Marxist Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_01.htm 14 On Contradiction, MSW I. 336. 15 Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership, MSW III. 117. 16 Ibid. 119. 17 See Why is that Red Political Power Exist in China? SWM 1.65-6. 18 Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War, SWM 2.103. 19 Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War, SWM 1. 237. 20 Mao elaborated the Communist guerrilla tactics as follows: “With our tactics, the masses can be aroused for struggle on an ever-broadening scale, and no enemy, however powerful, can cope with us. Ours are guerrilla tactics. They consist mainly of the following points: “Divide our forces to arouse the masses, concentrate our forces to deal with the enemy.”

“The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.” “To extend stable base areas,10 employ the policy of advancing in waves; when pursued by a powerful enemy, employ the policy of circling around.” “Arouse the largest numbers of the masses in the shortest possible time and by the best possible methods.” These tactics are just like casting a net; at any moment we should be able to cast it or draw it in. We cast it wide to win over the masses and draw it in to deal with the enemy. Such are the tactics we have used for the past three years.” See A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire, SWM 1.24. 21 All Reactionaries are Paper Tigers, SWM 5.517. 22 On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism, SWM 1.160. 23 See in particular: Mark Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971) and “The Formation of Mao’s Economic Strategy, 1927-1949” in John G. Gurley, China’s Economy and Maoist Strategy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976), 2093. 24 Isaac Deutscher, Russia, China, and the West: A Contemporary Chronicle, 1953–1966 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 104. 25 On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, MSW 5.385. 26 Ibid. 409. 27 “On The Question Of Stalin: Second Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU,” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/polemic/qstalin.htm 28 Mao Zedong, A Critique of Soviet Economics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), 51. 29 Ibid. 61. 30 Ibid. 93. 31 Ibid. 121. 32 Ibid. 135. 33 “Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-33g.htm

34 See for starters: Dongping Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008); Charles Bettelheim, Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China: Changes in Management and the Division of Labor (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974); William Hinton, Turning Point in China: An Essay on the Cultural Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972); E. L. Wheelwright and Bruce MacFarlane, The Chinese Road to Socialism: Economics of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970); Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, Daily Life in Revolutionary China (New York: Monthly Review Press: 1972). 35 Quoted in John Gerassi, “The Comintern, the Fronts and the CPUSA” in Michael Brown and others, ed., New Studies in the Politics and Culture of US Communism (New York: Monthly Review Press, ), 84. 36 Alistar Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006), 137. 37 Irwin M. Wall, “The French Communists and the Algerian War,” Journal of Contemporary History 12 (Jul. 1977): 539. 38 Gregory Elliott, Althusser: The Detour of Theory (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006), 10-11. 39 The Chinese would later criticize Soviet humanism as follows: “It substitutes humanism for the Marxist-Leninist theory of class struggle and substitutes the bourgeois slogan of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity for the ideals of communism. It is a revisionist programme for the preservation and restoration of capitalism.” The Origin and Development of the Differences Between the Leadership of the CPSU and Ourselves: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU,” Marx2Mao.org. http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/OD63.html 40 Quoted in Elliott 2006, 1. 41 Ibid. 52. 42 Louis Althusser, For Marx (New York: Penguin Press, 1969), 93-4. 43 Althusser 1969, 194. 44 Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital (London: New Left Books, 1970), 311. 45 Althusser 1969, 217. 46 Ibid. 113. 47 Ibid. 202.

48 See Elliott 2006, 19-20 and 169. 49 Althusser 1969, 173-4. 50 See ibid. 183-6. 51 Elliott 2006, 73-74. 52 Althusser 1976, 169. 53 See Elliott 2006, 52. Althusser himself later retracted the whole notion of theoretical practice as a form of theoreticism. See ibid. 178. 54 For more on the Maoists see Elliott 2006, 174 and especially Richard Wolin, The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 55 “Althusser in 1966: Cultural Revolution, Party, State and Conjuncture,” Kasama Project. http://kasamaproject.org/theory/2141-73althusser-in-1966-cultural-revolution-party-state-andconjuncture 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Althusser 1976, 91. 66 Ibid. 90. 67 Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism (New York: Verso Books, 2014), 215.

68 In the late 1970s, Althusser signed an appeal for the rehabilitation of murdered Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin, see Richard Day, ed., N. I. Bukharin: Selected Writings on the State and the Transition to Socialism (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1982), xxi. 69 Althusser 1976, 79. 70 Ibid. 80-1. 71 Ibid. 81. 72 Ibid. 83. 73 Ibid. 92-3. 74 Ibid. 81. According to a comrade of Althusser, the Maoist influenced economist Charles Bettelheim, what limited Trotskyist theories of socialist transition, such as those developed by Ernest Mandel was that they did not hesitate “What Mandel actually tries to do is to deduce, from the most abstract categories relating to socialist society, the more concrete economic categories that characterise this society, or the transitional societies, together with the practical laws that govern the working of these societies. By so doing, he fails to follow the road that leads from the most general abstractions to the concrete in thought. In order to traverse this road one needs to go outside the simple relationships of formal logic (deduction and reduction), and use the methods of dialectical synthesis. It is in fact impossible to re-create the concrete by merely adding abstractions together. It has to be reproduced by means of dialectics, which is, indeed, the way in which one gains access to reality. And in order to reach reality in this way, one has to proceed by mediation, by reconstituting in concepts the organic totality of a socio-economic formation, something that can only be done by taking account of all the factors that make up this totality, including, of course, the factors of practice, beginning with economic practice itself : and this is true, also, when one is trying to construct the theory of socialist economy…to operate with the most meagre of concepts, the only ones that could be worked out before there had been any social practice in the building of socialism. At the same time, he rejects as “impure”, and unworthy of being accorded any theoretical value, the concepts which it has been possible to work out since then, as a result of social practice in the building of socialism. As often happens, the positivist approach, that is, the mechanical contrasting of a dead “reality” with an equally dead abstraction, becomes transformed into a kind of idealism which renounces all approach to reality through practice.” See Charles Bettelheim, The Transition to Socialist Economy (Hassocks: Harvester Press Ltd., 1975), 150-1. 75 Althusser 2014, 19-21. 76 Ibid. 45. 77 Ibid. 156. 78 Ibid. 49.

79 Ibid. 251. 80 Ibid. 220. 81 Ibid. 230. 82 See Elliott 2006, 214-223. 83 See Wolin 2010 for the activity of the French Maoists. March 22, 2015 in THEORY. Tags: China, France, Maoism