Plymouth University Social Theory Group—Discussion 1

Apology

I joined this discussion rather late.  As with notes of the other discussions, I mostly recorded my own thoughts as a response of what other people said rather than trying to record what they said accurately.  It is also impossible just to read chosen texts naively, without awakening all the ghosts lurking there from other readings of other commentaries.  I have not written this up as a scholastic paper with all these references fully acknowledged, but I can supply some if anyone is interested. The final apology is that I’m using speech recognition software to make these notes, which explains the occasional bizarre error.

Economic determinism

As I joined the group, they were discussing the 1859 Preface and the famous paragraph about the economic base upon which arise the legal and political superstructures.  This has led to all sorts of debates about what Marx meant by the economy determining the key institutions in society.  The key phrase 'determinism in the last instance' led to one issue—is this a tight determinism or some loose or notion of influence?  I was reminded of Althusser’s homely example of the economic base serving as the foundations of a house.  Those foundations permit all sorts of different configurations of rooms to arise upon them, but they are essential in the last instance to limit the possibilities.  This approach went on to see various semi-independent 'levels' in the social formation (economic, political and ideological/cultural), with the economy limiting them in an ultimate sense.  We discussed two examples which showed the problems:

1.       The ways in which politicians seem unable to introduce radical reforms when they get to power.  One approach would be to see this as indicating the determining effect of the economy, in the sense that a fundamental agreement about what sort of economy we want—corporate, global, based on the finance sector—serves to limit the options almost unconsciously.

2.       The ways in which some commentators, including academics, are able to break out of economic determinism and use all sorts of other resources—cultural and social capital -- to come to their own conclusions and organise their own lives to a large extent independently of economic logic.

The other reading—the 18th Brumaire -- seemed to offer a much more complex analysis of the social formation, in this case the political regime of Louis Napoleon, 1851-70 in France.  The problem was to explain why, after a gloriously revolutionary period, a parody of an emperor gained power, somehow defeating all the other parties contending for power after the overthrow of Louis Philippe in 1848, including the emerging French proletariat who wanted to introduce socialism and a commune.  Marx gives an extremely detailed account, so detailed that it is almost impossible to follow without an intimate knowledge of the period.  In the chapter we looked at, a famous phrase about 'borrowed languages' is used to explain the way in which Louis Napoleon drew upon political traditions and echoes of his glorious great uncle to win over powerful factions, including the military.  (The chapter starts with another famous phrase about history repeating itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce ). The analysis has been used subsequently by Marxists to explain other anomalies such as the rise to power of Hitler or Mrs. Thatcher, who also pedalled a version of national history.  There is also an account of how political factions struggled behind the scenes to make deals and alliances, which seems rather a long way from the idea of a ruling class simply dominating everything.  In other words, political activity seems to be important in its own right—although there is a hint that class interests still emerge underneath the struggles. 

Science

The 1859 Preface claims that the movements of the economic base can be studied with the precision of a science, part of Marx's claim to have moved beyond political philosophy to a rigorous (‘materialist’) account of social change.  There was some discussion about whether this meant that Marx was a positivist.  In my own view, he is not, and he has a far more complex notion of science.  (His criticisms of positivism can be seen really well in the chapter on commodity fetishism in Capital vol 1).  Whether Marxism ever turned into a science has been also very much debated since, and the old chap doesn't come out of the subsequent debate too well, largely because he has not used key terms consistently, and it is difficult to disentangle the scientific predictions from the (superb) fiery language, sarcasm, bitter denunciations of opponents and the rest.

Certainly, the analysis in the 18th Brumaire just seems like classic historical work, unless you can see some underlying class mechanism working away behind all the sort of empirical complexity that classic non Marxist historians like.  Later Marxists have seen this work in terms of Marx tangling with political complexity instead of operating with abstractions, and eventually developing a mature grasp of social change as a result. 

Social change

It is clear that some theory of social change is being outlined in the 1859 Preface, and even the 18th Brumaire seems to be written in a tone of shocked surprise that some inevitable progress towards socialism has been temporarily halted.  Quite how this social change seems to develop is controversial again, however.  There was some discussion about whether Marx had some Darwinist mechanism in mind—he certainly admired Darwin, although this was not reciprocated.  Another approach is a straightforward 'class derivation' account that sees social change as driven by economic crises which produce social division and eventually political struggle.  The triumphant emergence of the proletariat is predicted as the inevitable outcome, especially in the earlier work, such as the 1848 Communist Manifesto.  Even in their middle careers, both Marx and Engels still seem to have had moments where they thought that the revolution was about to break out and sweep away capitalism altogether.  The proletarian revolution would end the class struggle, because the proletariat was the only universal class, whose interests were identical with those of humanity. 

The 18th Brumaire has been seen as a text that indicates some final realisation that polarisation followed by class war is by no means inevitable, and that capitalism can reform, revert to an earlier period, develop ideologies that end in powerful political alliances, and the like.  It is worth noting that Louis Napoleon's regime did not end in a revolution, but in a military defeat by Prussia.  The heroic Paris Commune was formed in the confusion but was eventually defeated as well.