I would like to call readers’ attention to certain features of a book that may, in many respects, surprise and disconcert them.
1) This short book is the first volume of a work that is to comprise two volumes. Volume 1 is about the reproduction of capitalist relations of production. Volume 2 will be about the class struggle in capitalist social formations.
For reasons of theoretical and political urgency obvious to everyone, I have decided to publish the present volume, Volume 1, without delay. In a certain way, it forms a whole that can stand on its own (aside from the liminal chapter on philosophy). While the theoretical basis for this volume has not been improvised, I have had to write the 200 pages it contains very quickly so that the text could appear rapidly.
I thought it might be useful to recall the basic principles of Marxist-Leninist theory concerning the nature of capitalist exploitation, repression and ideologization. Above all, it seemed to me imperative to show clearly what sort of system ensures the reproduction of the conditions of capitalist production – production being nothing but a means to the end of capitalist exploitation, since, under the capitalist regime, the production of consumer goods obeys the law of profit alone, and thus the law of exploitation.
A full discussion would consider 1) the reproduction of the productive forces and 2) the reproduction of the relations of production.
Since Marx discusses the reproduction of the productive forces at length in Capital Volume 1 (the theory of wages: reproduction of labour-power) and Capital Volume 2 (the theory of the reproduction of the means of production), I have treated this question cursorily. On the other hand, I have discussed the reproduction of the relations of production at length. Marx has left us important pointers on this subject, but they are unsystematic.
The system that ensures the reproduction of the relations of production is the system of state apparatuses: the repressive apparatus and the ideological apparatuses. That explains the title of Volume 1: The Reproduction of the Relations of Production (exploitation, repression, ideology).1
As the reader will see, I have taken the considerable risk of putting forward theses on these two points which, while they are in perfect conformity with the theory and practice of the Marxist-Leninist workers’ movement, had not yet been stated in systematic theoretical form. Thus I have sketched a theory of what I call the Ideological State Apparatuses and also of the functioning of ideology in general.
Since the analyses in Volume 1 depend, in certain cases, on principles to be worked out in Volume 2, I ask readers to grant me a kind of theoretical and political ‘credit’. I shall try to honour the obligation thus incurred in Volume 2, in which I shall broach the problems of the class struggle in capitalist social formations.
2) The present volume, Volume 1, begins with a chapter that will seem surprising: it is about the ‘nature’ of philosophy. It will seem the more surprising in that, after marking off the terrain with a few signposts, I leave the question of philosophy in abeyance and make a very long detour in order to discuss the question of the reproduction of the capitalist relations of production.
Why have I begun with this first chapter on philosophy when I could simply have begun with Chapter 2, on the mode of production? I do so for reasons that are very important both theoretically and politically. They will appear at the end of Volume 2, when we will be in a position to answer the questions: What is Marxist-Leninist philosophy?2 In what does its originality consist? Why is it a revolutionary weapon?
The present account of the reproduction of capitalist relations of production has not been placed under the aegis of the question of philosophy simply to facilitate the exposition. The fact is that we cannot say what Marxist-Leninist philosophy is without making the long detour through Volume 1 (Reproduction of the Relations of Production) and Volume 2 (The Class Struggle).
But why foreground the question of Marxist-Leninist philosophy this way, as well as the logically prior question of philosophy tout court (Volume 1, Chapter 1)?
I have not chosen to proceed in this fashion because I am, academically speaking, a philosopher – that is, because I am a specialist eager to talk about a subject I know a little about or because I want to ‘praise my wares’. I have done so for political and theoretical reasons, as a communist. Here are those reasons, in brief.
Everything that falls within the purview of the science founded by Marx (especially, in this volume, the theory of the reproduction of the relations of production) depends on a revolutionary science that Marx was only able to found on the basis of what the Marxist tradition calls the philosophy of dialectical materialism – very precisely, as we shall point out and also prove, on the basis of a proletarian class position in philosophy. It is, consequently, impossible – Lenin admirably understood and showed this – to grasp or, a fortiori, expound and develop Marxist theory, even on a single, limited point, without adopting proletarian class positions in the realm of theory. The characteristic task of each and every philosophy is to represent, in theory, a given class position. The characteristic task of Marxist philosophy is to represent, in theory, the proletarian class position.
Whence the primordial importance, for every exposition and every development of Marxist theory, of dialectical materialist philosophy – that is, the proletarian class viewpoint in philosophy. We shall show in Volume 2 that the role of Marxist-Leninist philosophy is not only vital for the development of Marxist science and the ‘concrete analyses of concrete situations’ (Lenin) which alone makes Marxist science possible, but that it is also vital for the political practice of the class struggle.
If this is so, it is no wonder that our first volume begins by asking ‘What is philosophy?’ or that our second volume should culminate in a definition of the revolutionary nature of the Marxist-Leninist conception of philosophy and its role in scientific and political practice. When we have reached that point, we will understand why and how philosophy is, in a concrete sense, a revolutionary weapon.
While my communist comrades, at least, will be willing to grant me, at the outset, what I have just said about the importance of Marxist-Leninist philosophy in scientific practice (above all in the theory of history founded by Marx, but in the other sciences as well) and also in the communist practice of the class struggle, an objection can nevertheless be raised against it, even from a Marxist standpoint. It may be objected that others have long since said and written what needs to be said about Marxist-Leninist philosophy, called, in the classical tradition, dialectical materialism. For everyone knows that there are many celebrated texts on the philosophy founded by Marx and his successors. For example, the Theses on Feuerbach (1845) and the afterword to the second German edition of Capital [(1873)]; for example, Engels’ Anti-Dühring (1877) and Ludwig Feuerbach (1888); for example, Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908) and Philosophical Notebooks (1914–15); for example, Stalin’s essay ‘Dialectical and Historical Materialism’ (1938); for example, Mao’s On Practice and On Contradiction (1937), and Where Do Correct Ideas Come From? [(1963)].
Why, under these circumstances, should we raise the question of Marxist-Leninist philosophy again?
1) Let us say: in order to take stock of things, but also in order to spell out certain crucially important points, while throwing the political and theoretical character of our class practice in philosophy into sharper relief.
2) We cannot, however, stick to this still speculative expository standpoint. It is not just a question of making the reader ‘see and understand’ the specificity and novelty of our philosophy. It will also be a question, from now on, of putting that philosophy to work in a practical way – in short, of ‘putting it to work’ on scientific problems.
It will appear in short order, beginning with our simple analysis of the unity comprised by a mode of production (the unity between productive forces/relations of production) but also in all that follows, that we are absolutely incapable of clearly perceiving these scientific questions and thus advancing the state of our knowledge unless we bring our philosophy directly into play.
That is why we affirm – for all the historical, theoretical and practical reasons just stated – that the time is ripe and that the moment is propitious, at least in our country, for taking critical stock of the state of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, demonstrating its revolutionary nature, refining certain aspects of it, and ‘putting it to work’ without delay on various scientific problems, some of which have a direct bearing on the class struggle today.
1. The time is ripe because we need to take stock of things and are capable of taking stock of things.
We have learned a great many new things since Marx and Engels and even since Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Today, we have at our disposal the extraordinary experiences of the Soviet Revolution and the Chinese Revolution; the lessons offered by the various forms of the construction of socialism and their diverse results; the lessons of all the working-class struggles against the capitalist bourgeoisie, and all the popular mass struggles as well (the struggle against fascism, the liberation movements of the ‘Third World’ countries, the Vietnamese people’s victorious struggle against French and then American imperialism, the struggle of Black Americans, student revolts, and so on).
We have not only the experience of the great victories of the workers’ movement at our disposal, we also have that of its defeats and crises.3 Lenin told us twenty times over that when we succeed in thoroughly analyzing the causes of a failure in order to draw its lessons, it always has more to teach us than a victory, since its consequences force us to go to the bottom of things. This holds a fortiori for a serious crisis.
When we consider the lessons that Marx drew from the initiatives of the popular masses under the Commune and from an analysis of the reasons for its failure or the lessons that Lenin drew from the popular masses’ invention of the Soviets during the 1905 revolution and the failure of this ‘dress rehearsal’, we can only say: What about us? What lessons are we to draw from all the unprecedented experiences, all the defeats, failures and victories we now have ‘at our disposal’, and from the crisis we are living through today?
Can all this stupendous experience leave philosophy indifferent? Should it not, rather, guide, nourish and enrich the revolutionary philosophy that the Marxist workers’ movement has handed down to us?
2. We also think that the moment is propitious for taking stock of the present state of Marxist-Leninist philosophy.
The moment is propitious because it is urgent to invest or reinvest Marxist-Leninist philosophy with all its revolutionary force, so that it can fulfil its ideological and political function as a revolutionary weapon, in the crisis that we are currently living through, as at other times. For the crisis we are living through should not be allowed to mask another that is infinitely more important.
Let there be no mistake: we need only become aware of the unprecedented crisis into which imperialism, beleaguered by its contradictions and its victims and assailed by the people, has now plunged, in order to conclude that it will not survive it. We are entering an age that will see the triumph of socialism across the globe. We need only take note of the irresistible course of popular struggles in order to conclude that in a relatively near future, despite all the possible twists and turns, the very serious crisis of the international communist movement included, the revolution is already on the agenda. One hundred years from now, perhaps only fifty years from now, the face of the world will have changed: the revolution will have carried the day from one end of the earth to the other.
That is why it is urgent to provide all those who are finding their way to communism – and more and more people are, especially among young men and women in the factories, the fields and the schools – with the means they need to arm themselves with Marxist-Leninist theory and the experience of the class struggle. The philosophy of Marxism-Leninism is one of these means, for it is a revolutionary philosophy: it is the only revolutionary philosophy.
To put it very simply, taking stock of the current state of Marxist-Leninist philosophy means understanding clearly, and as profoundly as possible, what this philosophy is, how it produces its effects, and how it must be utilized so as to serve, in Marx’s phrase, not to ‘interpret the world’ but to ‘change’ it.
Taking stock of the current state of Marxist-Leninist philosophy also means recalling, in order to explain and understand that philosophy, the basic acquisitions of the new science founded by Marx, historical materialism, without which Marxist-Leninist philosophy would not exist. Again, it means recalling that if Marx had not adopted a proletarian (dialectical-materialist) class position in philosophy, the science that he founded, historical materialism, would not exist. It follows that we have to ‘put this philosophy to work’ in order to refine and advance the state of our knowledge in Marxist science, so that we can more lucidly analyze the current concrete situation.
To make our exposé clearer, let us indicate the structure of what follows.
To grasp the sense in which Marxist-Leninist philosophy is revolutionary, we have to know what distinguishes it from earlier philosophies. In order to be able to make this distinction, we have first to know what philosophy in general is. Hence the order of our questions. First question: What is philosophy? Second question: What is Marxist-Leninist philosophy?
It appears at a glance that it is imperative to ask these two questions in the order just indicated. Yet they do not define the structure of our study. Why not? Because, as we shall see in a moment, it is impossible to answer the second question – What is Marxist-Leninist philosophy? – without making a very long detour; that is, without proceeding by way of an exposition of the basic results of the Marxist science of history, of which historical materialism is the general theory.
As a matter of fact, contrary to what all philosophers, including many Marxist philosophers, spontaneously think, the question ‘what is philosophy?’ does not fall under the jurisdiction of philosophy, even Marxist-Leninist philosophy. If it did, this would mean that it is philosophy’s task to define philosophy.
This is what philosophy has thought and done throughout its past history, constantly, with a few rare exceptions. This is what makes it fundamentally idealist, for to maintain that it is, in the last instance, the duty and right of philosophy and philosophy alone to define itself is to assume that it can know itself, that it is Self-Knowledge, that is, Absolute Knowledge, whether it uses this term overtly (as Hegel does) or practices the concept shamefacedly, without saying so (as all philosophy did before Hegel, with a few rare exceptions).
Thus it is no wonder that, if we want to propose a definition of philosophy that does not merely repeat philosophy’s purely subjective, hence idealist, hence non-scientific ‘self-consciousness’, but, rather, comprises objective knowledge of philosophy, we have to turn to something other than philosophy itself: namely, the theoretical principles of the science or sciences capable of providing us with the scientific knowledge of philosophy in general that we are looking for. As will appear, we shall have to refine some of these principles and advance the state of our knowledge in some cases, to the extent that we have the means to do so.
As will appear, that science and the other sciences deriving from it all depend on the unprecedented discovery thanks to which Marx opened up a new ‘continent’, the continent of history, to scientific knowledge. The general theory of this scientific discovery is known as historical materialism.
That is why we shall have to make a long detour through the scientific results we need, produced by historical materialism, in order to reach our goal, a scientific definition of philosophy.
In the last analysis, this long detour will explain the structure of our study. Here, in the order in which they occur, are the chapter titles:
Chapter 1: What is Philosophy?
Chapter 2: What is a Mode of Production?
Chapter 3: The Reproduction of the Conditions of Production
Chapter 4: Base and Superstructure
Chapter 6: The State and its Apparatuses
Chapter 7: The Political and Associative Ideological State Apparatuses
Chapter 8: The Reproduction of the Relations of Production
Chapter 9: The Reproduction of the Relations of Production and Revolution
Chapter 10: Law as an Ideological State Apparatus
Chapter 11: Ideology in General4
I wish to warn readers from the outset, solemnly, as it were, in order to avoid all misunderstanding, all confusion, and all unfounded criticism, that the order of exposition I have adopted has a serious disadvantage, one no other order of exposition can overcome. It is that the present volume proposes to discuss, above all, the mode of functioning of the superstructure (the state, the state apparatuses) as reproduction of the relations of production. It is, however, impossible to talk about the state, law and ideology without bringing class struggle into play. Proper logic would therefore seem to indicate that I should have adopted the opposite order of exposition, and begun by talking about the class struggle before talking about the state, law and ideology. The latter order of exposition, however, would have run into the same difficulty the other way around: for it is impossible to talk about classes and class struggle without first talking about the state, law and ideology. Thus we are caught in a circle, since we would have to talk about everything at once. The reason is quite simple: in reality, all the things that we would like to discuss go hand in hand, and all depend, albeit in a very precise way, on each other. They pay no mind at all to their complex functioning and the distinctions we must make to understand them; a fortiori, they are oblivious to the order of exposition we have to adopt to explain how they work.
Since the essence of what I have to say, to the extent that it involves new theoretical refinements of certain limited points, bears on the superstructure, it is legitimate, because one must choose in any case, to choose the order of exposition that offers as many theoretical and pedagogical advantages as possible. For, as readers will eventually see, we also have reasons of principle for thinking that the order of exposition we have chosen is the right one.
The class struggle will therefore constantly come into play after a certain – very early – point in our analysis. It will do so by way of a whole series of effects that remain unintelligible unless we refer to its reality and presence outside the objects we analyze, but inside them as well. However, as we are unable – for good reason – to present a theory of the class struggle beforehand, we shall constantly have to bring its effects into play without first having provided a thorough explanation of their causes.
It is the more important to spell this out in that the reality of the class struggle infinitely exceeds the effects of the class struggle that we will encounter in the objects analyzed in Volume 1. We state this principle clearly, in advance, so as to forestall criticisms based only on the inevitable one-sidedness of our order of exposition. Had we chosen the other order of exposition (beginning by talking about the class struggle before going on to talk about the state), just as many criticisms could have been raised, but from the other direction. On this point, therefore, we ask readers, not for their indulgence, but, simply, for their understanding. It is materially impossible to discuss everything at the same time if one wants to expound things with a modicum of order and clarity.
Two final remarks: we shall endeavour, precisely, to be as clear as possible. We must, however, warn our readers that, so as not to traduce our subject, we shall sometimes have to enter into explanations that are complex and call for sustained attention. This is not our fault. The difficulty of our explanations has to do with the objectively complex nature of philosophy, law, its apparatuses, and ideology.
Finally, we ask readers to take the present book for what it is, without asking that it do the impossible (for us). It is a simple essay, the beginnings of an investigation. While it is a product not of improvisation but of reflection, it obviously cannot avoid the risks of inadequacy, approximation and, of course, error that all research involves. All that we ask is a certain indulgence for the one who takes these risks. At the same time, however, we ask for the assistance provided by the most severe sort of criticism on condition, of course, that it be real criticism, that is, seriously argued and backed up with evidence, not a simple judgement handed down without reasons to justify it.
One last ‘warning’, if I may put it that way: nothing of what is advanced here should be taken, on any grounds whatsoever, as ‘the Bible truth’. Marx demanded that his readers ‘think for themselves’. That rule holds for all readers, whatever the nature of the text one submits to them.
1 [TN: Elsewhere, Althusser refers to the manuscript as “The Reproduction of the Relations of Production”.]
2 [EN: Footnote crossed out in the manuscript: ‘I am deliberately using, for the time being, the term “Marxist-Leninist philosophy”. I shall propose another, more accurate term at the end of the present essay.’]
3 The present crisis is dominated by two events of crucial importance: 1) the Twentieth Congress and its consequences, which called aspects of Stalin’s politics from the 1930s on into question; and 2) the split in the international communist movement, which called the political line that emerged from the Twentieth Congress into question.
4 [EN: Althusser incorporated into the second draft of his manuscript, the basis for the present edition, the chapter that has here become Chapter 7 (‘Brief Remarks on the Political and Associative Ideological State Apparatuses of the French Capitalist Social Formation’). What is identified as Chapter 7 in his list has here become Chapter 8, and so on. Chapter 10, here Chapter 11, was ultimately given the different title, ‘Further Remarks on Law and Its Reality, the Legal Ideological State Apparatus’; Chapter 11, here Chapter 12, was renamed ‘On Ideology’ and the title of Chapter 6 was truncated.]